"Re-thinking resistance to organisational change: the case of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries industry"

Abstract

The problem of resistance to organisational change has been highlighted through the contemporary literature on change management. Endemic with change programs are the reported failure rates, which suggest an unusually high percentage of all change initiatives fail. The cited reasons for the failures abound, from systemic management failure through to direct causes such as workforce absenteeism. However, throughout the literature the catch all term of 'resistance' to change is cited as the most dominant feature of change failure. The literature however does not deal in any in-depth way with the nature of why people resist change. The position of this thesis is that the literature on change is ill equipped to conceptualise and deal with the resistance issue due to the historical development of change management as a body of knowledge. This thesis argues that viewing identity as a process (incomplete and unfinished) offers clear insights as to why people resist change. Further, viewing identity as a process allows change to be understood as interference in the identity process.