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Management of Employees' Resistance to Change

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Submitted By AndyTiindi
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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT
STUDIES

RESEARCH TOPIC: MANAGEMENT OF EMPLOYEES’ RESISTANCE TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

BY DUMEVI ANDREW YAO
AC/07-2/DS/1070

SUPERVISOR: MR. ROBERT MWIN
CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
1.0 BACKGROUND
Organizations perceive change as very important for their survival and prosperity in today’s competitive environment. They make change initiative to keep up the pace with changing environment. The success and performance superiority of organizations are very much dependent on its ability to align its internal arrangement with the demand of external world.
It is also recognized that as humans as we are adapting to change is very difficult more especially when it affects our comfort. Notwithstanding, change can also be accepted provided it’s well interpreted to be well understood. Management of employees’ resistance towards organizational change is one of the major problems/threats to successful change programme.My first step after discovering employee’s resistance towards organizational change management led me to the exploration of causes of resistance which have been thought by different authors as very important for overcoming it. According to Mintzberg, the cure might actually prove to be just more of the cause (Mintzberg 1998).
On the other hand, organizations of today operate under increasing demands for change. The market has radically changed due to globalization, strong competition, technical development and a customer-driven market. (Härenstam et al., 2004) This high pace of change means that the organization must change behavior and manage to rapidly adapt to shifts in the market (Norrgren et al., 1996 In Nonås, 2005). At the same time, Beer and Nohria (2000) have shown that currently, many change projects and development programmes produce unsatisfactory results. To increase the ability to change, the change

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