A phenomenology study on situational antecedents of behavioral resistance to organizational change

One of the main causes of organizational change failure is employees’ resistance to change (Padro de Val & Fuentes, 2003). Because of abstract and multidimensional nature of resistance to change, it has been paid attention to it from diverse aspects (Piderit, 2000). The orthodoxy, however, is behavioral kind of attitudinal approach to resistance to change (Ashforth & Mael, 1998). Since, in its turn, behavioral resistance has different types (Yue, 2008), developing studies to explore the effective factors on them is necessary. In this regard, the purpose of this study is exploring the situational antecedents of behavioral types of resistance to change based on a phenomenology.

There are different approaches to studying the phenomenon of resistance to change: dispositional, political, deconstructive, and attitudinal (Hadavinejad & Tamaddon, 2014). Based on attitudinal approach, besides cognitive and affective aspects, resistance to change have behavioral aspect too. In its preliminary and simple form, the behavioral resistance is a kind of overt-conscious opposite reaction to change from protesters. However, it can be more complex based on overt-covert and conscious-unconscious dimensions. So, in addition to protesters, the other behavioral resistant employees are saboteurs, survivors, and zombies (OConnor, 1993). Although, the dispositional antecedents of these kinds of behavioral resistance have been explored heretofore (Hadavinejad & Tamaddon, 2014), the presented study is devoted to exploring the situational ones.

Delimited to attitudinal approach in resistance to change, data gathered through lived experiences of 18 top managers of administrative organizations in Rafsanjan, I.R. of Iran, in the framework of hermeneutic phenomenology, based on typical sampling up to theoretical saturation. Data analyzed based on Diekelmann et al. (1989) proposed process using Maxqda software. In order to gain confidence from data reliability, its credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability were checked.

Diverse themes were explored through preliminary data codifying and reduced to macro themes in an iterative process. Findings showed that the situational context facilitates sabotage are authoritarian leadership style, perceived organizational injustice, and weakness of appraisal assessment and reward systems. Weakness of appraisal assessment, staffing, and training systems, job ambiguity and role overload are situational factors affecting survivors, too. The protesters behave in a context included of democratic leadership style, perceived organizational injustice, perceived organizational nonsupport, and weakness of appraisal assessment, reward, and notification systems. Finally, the main situational antecedents of zombies’ behavioral resistanc to change are weakness of training, staffing, and notification systems.

Based on findings, reinforcement of reward system beside effort to reduce injustice and improve organizational support can lead to decrease of employees’ conscious behavioral resistance to change in Rafsanjan administrative organizations. Moreover, changing the leadership style from authoritarian to democratic may reduce sabotage, as well as, improving notification system that can decrease protests toward change. Since, it is concluded that weakness of appraisal assessment system would effects all types of behavioral resistance to change, except zombie, improving mentioned system would cause protesters, saboteurs, and survivors be diminished in organization. In order to manage the unconscious resistance, it is necessary to improve the staffing and training systems. However, promoting the notification system beside two prior systems would lead to reduction in zombie behavioral resistance to change. Whereas, to decrease the survivors’ resistance, it is recommended the job ambiguity and role overload be disappeared.