Date submitted: 12-14-2014
Title of your paper: Understanding Resistance to Change
Introduction
This paper will address strategies to overcome resistance to implementing new technology. The current financial system promotes all encompassing brisk change. Employee resistance can in reality handicap an organization (Bolognese, 2002). Resistance, defined by Folger & Skarklicki (1999), is employee behavior that interferes with desirable outcomes (Bolognese, 2002). Current analysis of the “resistance to change phenomena” is biased (Ford, Ford, D’Amelio, 2008). A predominant view that resistance is a presupposition to change is an incorrect and biased analysis of the actual occurrence that takes place within the change cycle. Innovators inclined to look for and find opposition unwittingly confirm its existence and validate a negative outcome for introducing change (Ford, Ford, D’Amelio, 2008). Academia and business studies validate a pervasive belief that employee resistance is innate, however this view does not fully reflect on the organization’s role in the change cycle. These views tends to focus on change agents, those seeking to bring about change, as victims of unfounded and dysfunctional responses of change recipients, those individuals who are responsible for the actual implementation or adaptation (Ford, Ford, D’Amelio, 2008).
Implementation most notably affects the functional area of “training and re-training” within the organizational structure. With change, there is an expectation of a learning curve that might cause a loss of productivity. However, most people are willing to work harder to learn a new skill, potentially increasing their desirability as an employee. (Roskies, E., Liker, J. K., & Roitman, D. B., 1988). Technical skills are a bulwark for the modern worker. Conversely, employees who do not possess advanced or current technical skills feel left out of a company’s plans for advancement. (Roskies, E., Liker, J. K., & Roitman, D. B.,...