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...go underground in the face of overwhelming pressures for change, but if these pressures let up too soon, it may surface as resentment of the change agents. The careers of the change agents may be seriously affected. Although they survive at apparently successful change process, they may get "buried." Three cases illustrate this problem and offer practical lessons for the management of resistance to change.
Introduction
A plane crashes on the border of the United States and Mexico. Where do you bury the survivors?
--Brainteaser
This brainteaser illustrates the irony of burying survivors. Survivors are not normally buried. However, this paper proposes that organizational change agents who have survived change efforts are sometimes figuratively "buried" or punished after the change effort is complete as the result of ex post effects of resistance to change. Most prior studies of resistance to change have focused on ex ante and ad hoc effects--resistance to change efforts before and during the change process (Coch and French, 1948; Lewin, 1958; Piderit, 2000). This paper uses three real-world cases to frame the examination and discussion of ex post effects of resistance to change.
Case 1
A Fortune 200 company determined that an employee strike was a likely option in one of its largest subsidiaries if the unions would not accept management's need for greater control over work processes and scheduling (Vigilante, 1994). A hand-picked group of senior production executives developed plans to operate the production facilities with nonunion replacement workers and made extensive contingency plans to ensure that production would continue in case of a strike. Negotiations failed and a strike occurred. The production contingency plans were put into place, and the plants continued to operate. The union was able to convince consumers not to buy the company's products in a legally questionable secondary boycott, which prevented the company from being able to force acceptance of the labor agreements it wanted. The subsidiary was sold during the strike (Vigilante, 1994). The majority of the production executives who had developed and executed the successful production contingency plans left the company in the next two years.
Case 2
An IT organization within a large entertainment company undertook a large-scale change project to transform the way professional staff managed, delivered, and billed client work. A senior-level Operating Steering Committee (OSC) was formed with five leaders who represented key areas of the IT organization to guide the change initiative and be the interface to the CIO and consulting team. The OSC discovered early in the project that the scope and resource requirements of the project were not clearly understood by the CIO, corporate controller, and consulting team. The OSC worked with the consulting team for a few months, and then stopped the project to reevaluate. The OSC then informed and engaged the CIO, Corporate Controller on key project issues, reestimated the level of effort to complete the project, gained executive and organization buy-in, and drove the project to successful implementation. The change initiative grew from a proposed four-to-six-month effort to a 21-month, large-scale change program. All facets of the project were implemented with strong participation from all parts of the organization, and consistent communications were delivered via town hall meetings, email updates, and focus groups. The IT executive team acknowledged the project success to the IT and client organizations. However, four of the five original OSC change leaders were forced out of the IT organization within 16 months of successfully completing the project.
Case 3
The business college at a well-respected university decided to seek accreditation on an expedited basis from an elite accrediting agency. The dean and his staff worked long hours ensuring the school would do well in the accreditation process. The school was accredited despite resistance by some faculty to the accreditation process. The university celebrated the accreditation and then removed the dean and key members of his staff from their positions for no cited reason other than alleged differences with the faculty about how accreditation was accomplished.
The three cases may be examples of ex post effects of resistance to change, where forces resisting change punish the change agents after the change effort is completed. This paper suggests that resistance to change can create ex post or after-the-fact effects, i.e., that individuals and organizations can push back against change agents responsible for organizational change in reprisal for the change agents' role in the change.
The result is that change agents who initially appear to have survived the change effort are "buried" as a result of their effort and may leave the organization voluntarily or involuntarily. These exits may represent additional corporate and individual costs of change efforts, and these costs may need to be considered when organizations or change agents contemplate change plans. Study of this phenomenon begins by examining the literature on resistance to change.
Resistance-to-Change Literature
Organizational studies have examined resistance to change for more than 50 years (Lewin, 1947; Coch and French, 1948). Piderit (2000) suggested that "a review of past empirical research reveals three different emphases in conceptualizations of resistance: as a cognitive state, as an emotional state, and as a behavior." The next section examines these three areas.
Resistance to change as a cognitive state
Lewin (1947, 1951) discussed the phenomenon of resistance by individuals and organizations to changes in organizational practices and procedures as the result of a rational calculus. Lewin's approach is based on "the analytical tools of mathematical economics" (1951) and is an extension of his force field theory of organization change. The latter suggests that change cannot occur unless the forces promoting change overcome the forces resisting it. The forces promoting change, or driving forces, include emerging technologies, improved raw materials, increased competitive pressures, and added organizational pressures....
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