Resistance to change as a positive force: Its dynamics and issues for management development

Career Development International

Volumn 1, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 24-28

  Perren, Lew ^a   Megginson, David ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON   (United Kingdom)

^b SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84986014437     PISSN: 13620436     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/13620439610124693     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. For the purpose of this paper a middle manager is defined as an individual who is in an interface position, being managed by more senior managers as well as managing people and resources.
2. Burnes, B., Managing Change, Pitman, London, 1992.
3. Carnall, C.A., Managing Change in Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990.
4. Clarke, L., The Essence of Change, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1994.
5. French, W.L. and Bell, C.H., Organization Development, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984.
6. Kanter, R.M., The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work, Allen & Unwin, London, 1985.
7. Plant, R., Managing Change and Making it Stick, Fontana, London, 1987.
8. Conti, T., Building Total Quality:A Guide for Management, Chapman & Hall, London, 1993.
9. Dale, B.G., Total Quality and Human Resources: An Executive Guide, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.
10. Oakland, J.S., Total Quality Management, Heinemann, Oxford, 1989.
11. Hammer, M. and Champy, J., Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, HarperCollins, London, 1993.
12. Peppard, J. and Rowl, P., The Essence of Business Process Re-engineering, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1995.
13. Champy, J., Re-engineering Management: the Mandate for New Leadership, HarperCollins, London, 1994.
14. An honourable exception to this position is the classic paper by Harrison[15], on choosing the depth of an organizational intervention. In this paper he spells out the perspective of consultants and suggests that the tools that they use can lead to phenomena which they then interpret as resistance. In an even earlier paper[16] he argues that the “castle” of ourdefences s as important as the “battleground” of our need to know: “though it may be paradoxical, we cannot increase learning by destroying the defenses which block it” (p. 290).
15. Harrison, R., “Choosing the depth of organizational intervention”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 6 No. 2, 1970, pp. 189-202; in Harrison, R., he Collected Papers of Roger Harrison, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1995.
16. Harrison, R., “Defenses and the need to know”, Human Relations Training News, Vol. 6 No. 4, 1963, pp 1-3; in Harrison, R., he Collected Papers of Roger Harrison, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1995.
17. Palmer, G., British Industrial Relations, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1983.
18. Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-run Companies, Harper & Row, New York, NY, 1982.
19. Deal, T. and Kennedy A., C orporate Cultures: the Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life, Penguin, London, 1988.
20. Notable exceptions are seminal works by Dalton[21] who investigated the tactics which managers employ to protect themselves and their departments, and Fox[22] who analysed different types of conflicts, including those between managers.
21. Dalton, M., Men who Manage, Wiley, Chichester, 1959.
22. Fox, A., A Sociology of Work in Industry, Collier-Macmillan, San Francisco, CA, 1971.
23. A notable exception to this tide of unitarist thought is Pascale[24], who suggests that conflict can be used as a positive force for organizational competitiveness. He suggests that the management process should harness (rather than suppress) contention, which offers a powerful mechanism for organizational self-renewal.
24. Pascale, R., Managing on the Edge: How Successful Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1990.
25. Beer, S., Diagnosing the System for Organizations, Wiley, Chichester, 1985.
26. Lewin, K., “Group decisions and social change”, in Swanson, G.E., Newcomb, T.M. and Hartley, E.L. (Eds), Readings in Social Psychology, Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, San Diego, CA, 1958.
27. Kotter, J.P. and Schlesinger, L.A., “Choosing strategies for change”, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1979.