Strategic Change
• Major transformations in the structure, size, or functioning of an organization for the purpose of achieving strategic objectives
• Degree of Change:
– Radical change
• Major adjustments in the
• ways a firm does business
– Incremental change
• Evolution over time
• Many small routine changes Timing of Change
• Reactive Change:
– Responding to changes in the external or internal environment.
• Anticipatory Change:
– Looking for better ways to stay
– Ahead of the competition.
Why People Resist Change
1. Direct Costs/Limited Resources
2. Saving Face/Vested Interests
3. Fear of the Unknown
4. Breaking Traditions/Routines
5. Incongruent Systems
6. Incongruent Team Dynamics
One of the well-documented findings is that organizations and their members resist change. It provides a
degree of stability and predictability to behavior. There is a definite downside to resistance to change. It
hinders adaptation and progress.
Resistance to change does not necessarily surface in standardized ways. Resistance can be overt,
implicit, immediate, or deferred. It is easiest for management to deal with resistance when it is overt and
immediate.
Implicit resistance efforts are more subtle—loss of loyalty to the organization, loss of motivation to
work, increased errors or mistakes, increased absenteeism due to “sickness”—and hence more difficult to recognize.

Similarly, deferred actions cloud the link between the source of the resistance and the reaction to it. A
change may produce what appears to be only a minimal reaction at the time it is initiated, but then
resistance surfaces weeks, months, or even years later. Reactions to change can build up and then
explode seemingly totally out of proportion. The resistance was deferred and stockpiled, and what
surfaces is a cumulative response.