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Why does resistance to change happen, and how can we manage organizational conflicts? In this video, we will address these questions. First, we want to understand the psychological, emotional, and sociological factors contributing to resistance to change. We will explore different types of resistance—logical and rational, emotional, and social—and how they manifest within organizations. Finally, we will learn strategies for overcoming resistance and managing conflict during periods of organizational change.
Let's start with an introductory example. Consider Thomas Edison, an amazing inventor who pioneered direct current (DC). One of Edison's employees, Nikola Tesla, invented alternating current (AC). Tesla argued that AC was the only scalable solution for lighting entire cities, while DC worked well only for small tasks. Edison hated the idea so much that he launched a campaign against Tesla. He could have embraced Tesla's invention, but instead he hired a PR firm to badmouth AC and even funded the first electric chair using AC to show how dangerous it was. He did many awful things simply because he loved his own invention so much that he could not see the usefulness of something else that came from someone who worked for him.
While Edison's mistake is extreme, we must ask ourselves if we make similar errors by falling too much in love with our own ideas. Is this just an extreme case? Historically, we have seen many examples in science. Galileo rejected Kepler's idea that the moon influences tidal motions, and Davy rejected Dalton’s atomic theory. Such examples are common throughout scientific history.
We call this the "not invented here" phenomenon. It refers to a bias where individuals reject external knowledge, not because it's unhelpful, but because they have a negatively shaped attitude toward that knowledge. External knowledge might cross various boundaries—organizational, spatial, disciplinary—and resistance can increase with the number and complexity of these boundaries.
Consider a scenario where two colleagues in the same department, sitting next to each other, exchange ideas (type 1). This involves no external boundary. Compare that to a scenario with different companies in different countries, with different professional backgrounds and languages (type 8). Knowledge here crosses multiple boundaries, increasing the likelihood of "not invented here" bias and resistance.
Change often involves new ideas coming from different sources. People might resist change for several reasons. Let's consider some common drivers of resistance:
We can group resistance into three categories: logical or rational, emotional or psychological, and sociological or social. Rational resistance may involve disagreement with facts or logic. Emotional resistance might stem from fear, mistrust, or a threat to self-identity. Sociological resistance might arise when group norms or values are challenged.
In organizations, people rarely admit fear or emotional reasons. They often present rational arguments instead, making it harder to identify the true source of resistance.
This resistance can lead to conflict. Conflict is defined as antagonistic interaction between parties whose actions negatively affect each other's interests. Conflict can be healthy when it focuses on tasks, values, perspectives, and expectations. It can be unhealthy when it involves competition over power or resources, personal grudges, or faulty communication.
The impact of conflicts varies. Destructive conflicts harm cooperation, increase differences, and can lead to irresponsible behavior. Constructive conflict resolution can clarify problems, generate new solutions, release stress, and build cooperation and understanding.
So, how do we manage conflicts constructively?
We can consider different conflict resolution styles based on cooperativeness and assertiveness:
To negotiate conflict, separate people from the process. Focus on issues, not positions. Identify and rank goals, generate alternatives that provide mutual gains, and view the problem from multiple perspectives. Use objective criteria to evaluate alternatives, resist pressure, establish monitoring criteria, and learn from each conflict to handle future issues better.
In summary:
Thank you for watching.
why does resistance to change happen and how can we manage organizational conflicts this is what we will talkabout in this video so first of all we want tounderstand the psychological emotional and sociological factors contributing to resistance to change and we want toexplore the types of resistance so logical and rational emotional and social resistance and how they manifestwithin organizations and in the last step we want to learn strategies for overcoming resistance and managingconflict during periods of organizational change but let's start with a little videointroduction there's a story of Thomas Edison the amazing inventor who invented one among one ofthe things the direct current and one of the guys working for Edison Teslainvented the alternating current and Tesla argued for many reasons that the alternating current is really the rightway to move forward that is the only scalable solution the direct current works verywell for small things but if we wanted to light whole cities we need to go with the alternating current and and Edisonhated the idea he hated it so much that he actually went on a campaign against Tesla he was a guy who worked for him hecould have had the patent but he actually wanted to reject it and and he did lots of awful stuff he hired a PRfirm to try and um you know bad mouth alternating current he actually fundedand the first electrical chair to use alternating current to show how you actually fry people and um he basicallydid lots and lots of bad stuff and and the analysis of what happened to Edison was that he was so in love with directcurrent he's so in love was so in love with his own invention that he couldn't see that something else that somebodywho worked for him invented could have actually been much more useful and of course the the mistake that Edison madetoday of course alterating current is has won in a big in a big way the mistake Edison has made um is notsomething that we usually make in the same magnitude but the question is can we also make the same mistakes when wefall in love too much with our own ideasso we could ask ourself whether this uh example here of uh what we call the current war is just an extreme case sowhether this example of resistance towards this new uh invention made byTesla by his uh former employer by Thomas Edison is just an extreme casebut historically we see or we can historically see many of these uhexamples that happened in uh in in in Science History so for instance Galileorejected Kepler for his idea that the moon creates uh tidal motions and wavesuh in in um in in open sea or that Daveyrejected Dalton uh when he suggested that there is uh an atomic structure ofall matter so of all material that we observe so we see uh across uh yeah thethe decades and centuries of science that such examples exist and what we uhcall this is uh and we saw this already in the video the so-called not inventedhere uh phenomenon and what is not invented here so not invented hererefers to a bias a bias in that individuals do not use knowledge thatcomes from external um and that per se is perhaps not a problem but it is aproblem when this is a bias that is induced by a negatively shaped attitudeof these individuals towards that knowledge so just use not using all the knowledgethat is there is not a bias per se if that knowledge is not helpful right butif that knowledge might be good and its suboptimal utilization or even rejectionum is uh happening then we speak of a bias and then we talk speak about notinvented here induced by this negative attitude toward this external knowledgewhat does external knowledge now here mean and our uh illustration here perhaps helps in that regard so thereare different boundaries that knowledge might cross it could cross organizational boundaries inside thefirm in across functions for insight for for instance right so that uh Knowledgefrom production might have to cross the organizational boundary towards um R&Dfor instance or the organizational boundary between organizations so knowledge has to cross uh in a strategicAlliance for instance from firm a to from firm B there might be spatial orGeographic boundaries so just because of distance um that has to be crossed theremight be a boundary that knowledge has to Cross or idea have to cross or theremight be a contextual or what we call also disciplinary boundary so knowledgemight have to cross disciplinary boundaries in the example of uh a mechanical engineer talking toelectrical engineer or a business people talking to somebody from from computerscience then knowledge and the ideas have to cross these contextualboundaries and if you look here at this illustration then in type one everything is external internal right so we have noboundary to cross uh inside the organization no spatial uh distance andno contextual disciplinary boundary this could be the example of two colleagues sitting in the same office um having thesame background working in the same business unit and Department of the organization and just talking to eachother then there is no real boundary that knowledge has to cross and comparing this year to type 8 whereeverything is external right so we have an organizational boundary let's say twodifferent organizations um where people stem from different backgrounds let's say we haveone mechanical engineering company and one company uh in electrical engineeringand one is located let's say in Germany and the other one in uh Southern Americaso we have a great distance both uh organizational wise spatial wise andcontextual wise between these uh involved parties and there might be a negative attitude just because of thisexternality towards uh this knowledge uh due to yeah these different boundariesthat knowledge has to cross and that's one example of one phenomenon that canoccur in organizations um during change um and change has often to do with new ideascoming from other uh sources coming from different sources where uh thatknowledge that idea has to cross one of this boundaries and this is just one phenomenon that we might observe in uhin real life um organizations so we learned now a littlebit about different um different examples of resistance to change we learned about the idea of falling inlove with the own ideas and the problems behind that and something about boundaries and different types ofboundaries but we have to ask ourselves the question like why do people refuse to change so why are people againstchange so let's have a deeper look at thewhy so let's think about different types of resistance first of all or firstexample might be reluctance to lose control nobody likes losing control and in this case individuals might feel umthat control over their life situation or of course working situation whatever situation is taken away from them withchanges that imposed on them rather than being self-initiated so the idea or the feeling that somebody is like forcingchange upon you and you have to change accordingly and then kind of have the feeling of losing control over thesituation then there's cognitive frigidity that means that there are people who are not very flexible intheir mind right and if uh people who are not flexible who are perhaps dogmatic um and rigid uh closed mindminded there might be uh they might yeah not feel very willing and able to adjustto new situations and thereby might be reluctant to um change the situationchange their life situation change their working habits and thereby ctivefrigidity might be uh one way how resistance happens a third way might bethe lack of psychological resilience and change is is a stressor but some peopleare more resilient than others so resilience might predict an individual's ability to cope with change the higheryour resilience is the better you might be able to cope with change and the Very Special form of uhresilience that might uh yeah that that people might lack is the intolerance tothe adjustment period that is always uh involved in change right so thisadjustment period is characterized by uncertainty and people um might not beyeah able or resilient enough to cope with this uncertainty during the changeprocess um and uh yeah that that uh that time also involves uh learning andadjustment and uh to reduce the uncertainty and people might have psychological intolerance of this uhyeah adjustment period and the fifth um type of resistance might be the preference forlow levels of stimulation and Novelty so different people um are like havedifferent preferences on novelty and new things so we can distinguish betweenadaptive individuals and Innovative individuals so adaptive individuals are individuals who are best at performingwithin a well- defined and familiar framework so they kind of like the comfort zone and Innovative uh orInnovative individuals they are better at finding novel Solutions outside the giving framework so kind of thinkingoutside the bar or outside the comfort zone so Innovative individuals might generally exhibit a greater need for anovel stimuli and finally um yeah I mean people might fall in love to some degreewith habits how they behave how processes look like um and knowingthings being familiar to things is also yeah what what is written here breeds Comfort right so we uh we we feelpositive towards things that we know where we feel safe in doing it becausewe simply know how to do it and if we need to change that means we need to tosomehow cope with this uncertainty to learn something new and that might produce stress uh in in in that timewhile people have to unlearn old habits and learn new habits so these are different types of resistance that wecould can observe but still we might might ask ourself what is yeah uh thethe underlying reason or what kind of drivers behind this can we observe uh ordeduce from from Theory and uh basically we uh want want to contrast here threedifferent different yeah types or levels of resistance where um yeah that drivein the end um why people um resist and one type here is logical or rationalresistance resistance so people might disagree with facts the reasoning the logic that somebody brings up when he orshe is proposing change um and uh there might be a reason forthat might be that people simply disagree with this because it needs time and effort to adjust to the change umhowever not all of this kind of uh resistance might be negative right itmight be also constructive to disagree with facts or rational reasoning umbecause uh we see uh a mistake in there right so logical or rational resistanceone form of resistance that we might observe another one is another driver ispsychological or emotional resistance right so we might uh just have fear uhof of the unknown fear of the uncertain situation we might uh mistrust ourleaders uh we might be feel threatened um by thechange by uh feeling insecure in in this uncertain situation or that our own uhyeah self-identity is just and self esteem is threatened by what uh thischange is inducing so that we yeah in the end come up with negative emotions towards the change and this is alsorelated to what we call sociological or social resistance because a change mightalso challenge a group the interest of the groups the Norms the values of the groups and people who associate themselwith that group might uh then also come up with these negative emotions umbecause there is uh this this sociological or socialresistance but there's more on that here because the tricky thing is that peoplewho might fear something in an organizational setup it's not thatlikely that people will truly speak up and say hey I'm afraid of this change usually people will come up withsome more logical fact-based rational uh yeah arguments towards notchanging right so usually people will come up with uh uh logical reasoning andarguments and they will not truly say okay we will or we we feel afraid wehave fear um because yeah I mean it's usually something that we just do in avery trusted environment perhaps in your family or so that you speak openly andfrankly about your emotional situation right so that's rather tricky here withthese different types of uh or levels of resistance that we might observe um thatuh although the true uh yeah source of resistance is perhaps more sosociological or emotional people are less likely to show that openly but uhwill more likely uh resist by using uh a logicalargument so let's now ask ourself okay how do we Define conflicts at the end sowhat is a conflict in itself we brought up two definitions one rather older onefrom 1978 and one from 2001 and in the first definition by Robins a conflict isdefined as any kind of opposite action or antagonistic interaction between twoor more parties antagonistic in the sense of like contradicting um interaction between two or more partiesthe second definition by leevy is that conflict is the process by which people or groups perceive that others havetaken some action that has a negative effect on the interests so this is howwe Define um conflict and now let's think about um yeah the content ofconflict so first of all there is kind of a healthy component of conflict because conflict is focusing on taskissues so when you have conflict or when conflict arises doesn't mean that this is kind something negative because youcan also focus on um the points that can be increased or can be done betterfurthermore it's legitimate differences of opinions about tasks so not everybody has to have the same opinion and whenit's for example in an organizational environment different opinions also help to achieve a goal more effectively or todefine or discuss different um points of views of course it also um highlightsdifferences in values and perspectives and also this is kind something that is very valuable in especially also inorganizational environment and it highlights different expectations about the impact of decisions so overallconflict also has a kind of healthy or a kind of good um goodperspective however conflicts also can become unhealthy and when speaking aboutunhealthy conflicts we're for example speaking about competition over power Rewards or resources because theseconflicts clearly can then result in something bigger and something that can of course also hinder the the workingprocess or the organization itself of course conflicts between individuals orgroup goals can be something unhealthy or a pully run team meet meetings can also result in unhealthy conflictsbecause for example some people just don't feel that their opinion is understood or um that they are listeningto so poorly run team meetings can also lead to unhealthy and conflicts personal grudgesfrom the past of course sometimes you cannot foresee them these are also something that has to be avoided andfaulty communication and faulty communication um is something that is I would say the basis of a lot ofconflicts that you can feel of course also in the businesslife so when we now analyze the impact of conflicts uh conflicts can of coursebe very destructive so it takes attention away from the other important activities it undermines moralself-concepts or polarizes people and groups reducing cooperation so whenconflicts arise and then they are solved in a destructive way this can really hinder or impact had the the working ofan organization group or um other surrounding of course it increases orsharpens differences because in a destructive way and conflicts if conflicts are resolved in a destructiveway then it's not like meeting in the middle but it's more like falling apart about different opinions or somethinglike that and of course it can lead to irresponsible and harmful Behavior suchas fighting name calling Bulet bullying so conflict can really like um this trya good working environment on the other hand conflict can also be resolved in aconstructive way so results in clarification or important problems and issues might be um a result of then theconflict or also finding new solutions to problems or as we already talkedabout that incorporating different points of views and opinions can of course also help to reach a certain goalit can help release emotion anxiety or stress or builds for example corpor ation among people through learning moreabout each other so in a way also perspective taking can be a result of constructive conflictresolution and as a last Point constructive conflict resolution might also help individuals to developunderstanding and skills because if like solution or like if solving a conflict in a constructive way the conflictingparties can also learn from this conflict and then of course in the future perhaps um yeah behave in adifferent way in the same situation okay so what did we learn so far wetalked about resistance to change and why people might resist to change we saw that example of Tesla and Edison as oneexample we s we dived into different reasons why people might resist and ifpeople are resisting to change this this might end up in a conflict right butusually we we think about uh of conflicts as being uh negative andunhealthy but we saw already that uh conflicts can have also have a a healthycomponent unhealthy conflicts are very likely to end up destructive right so that they destroy something in theorganization healthy conflicts are perhaps uh more likely to lead to uhconstructive uh impacts in the organization so a key question for management is is how can we manageconflicts and how can we resolve them so that they are healthy and constructivein the end right and on the next slide we want to explore um yeah these conflictmanagement styles and conflict resolution ways that uh literature hasuh suggested and to do this there are two axes here that we want to with thatwe want to illustrate these different resolution Styles one axis is cooperativeness so how Cooper ative arewe in trying to resolving the the conflict right so we can be veryCooperative uh and try to to talk to people and uh acknowledge their opinionor we can be less Cooperative um and uh yeah do less ofthis we can also be uh assertive right so we can to some degree force people uhin a specific way if we have the organizational power power and uh this means that we are very assertive andresolve a conflict just by power and we can OB obviously do the opposite and umyeah do nothing uh in with Force so one conflict resolution style is and this isrelated to being not very cooperative and not very assertive that we try toavoid conflict right so we can maintain the relationship between a manager anduh the subordinates in the organiz ation that's a that that's an advantage if we have no conflict then we still have apositive relationship but there's a Strong Weakness here we don't really resolve a conflict we just hope that ityeah goes away from itself right so that we do not really U find a solution to itbut that's one conflict resolution Style just to avoid the conflict at all and ifwe're still not assertive but are more Cooperative we are thinking about about the conflict resolution sty ofaccommodating so the advantage is that the relationship is maintained however some members give up their position thisis the again again this is then also at the same time the be weakness of accommodation because when members giveup the position then it costs the team the value of some members op opinions and of course alsoideas so if we are not very Cooperative but very very assertive that's what wecall a comp competition or competing resolution style so in that way it'sit's very fast and it uh it is also leading to a correct decision if the onewho forces uh the organization or the subordinate the employees in a certainway is correct in doing so the weakness is there might be aggression and angertowards the one who forces people um there might be u a wrecked relationshipbetween people and in such a situation or in an organization that is verycompetitive winning winning an argument winning uh yeah winning a conflict canbe more important than in the end make good decisions so it's more about uhyeah your position and your power in the organization than really bringing forward the organization and beingconstructive and productive in the organization so when there are the extremes between cooperation and acertif um from low to high then of course there's always a middle and this is what we call compromising or to find acompromise so the advantage is clearly that it can resolve the conflict in short time and everybody gives a littleso everybody kind of gives a little opinion and then you meet in the middle the weakness however might be that teamsmight end up with suboptimal Alternatives and ideas that nobody really wants because it is likeeverybody is like compromising in the middle and there's no clear okay this is what I I really stand for and this iswhat I really want so perhaps this is the the problem of meeting in the middleand the one giving both D Dimensions here in the in the extreme is collaboration right so we are then veryvery Cooperative but we also uh try to convince Everybody by being cooperativeand taking yeah in the end all opinions on board um that's perhaps in in manysituations a very good uh way of doing it because in the end everybody's happy with it decision but it takes time andeffort and it requires yeah a lot of cooperation between all the people to acknowledgethe others perspective and a resulting compromise between all of them might inthe end um yeah not really good lead to a good situ uh decision because itperhaps just yeah in the end uh everybody gives in a little bit uh anduh the advantages might go away that perhaps lie also in more extreme situations or in more extreme Uopinions so when thinking about now these different styles we can of course also negotiate conflict so the first onehow to negotiate conflict is of course to separate people from the process what does it mean it means that handlingissues and relationships separately so that you're you're diagnosing not the cause of the conflict and then youencourage both sides to recognize and understand their emotions so it's more that you are not like dealing with thethe the people itself but to kind of separate it from the process so theprocess of resolving the conflict can be separated from the people that's important and if you do so then youshould focus on the shared interests that people have in that process and on the subject matter right so we focus onthe issues that we need to uh talk about and not on the real positions thateverybody has about these issues but we focused uh on the issues itself to uhsay okay we really want um these issues to be solved and thereby we can perhapsidentify a way so that everybody gets somehow what they want um and to do thiswe would usually identify and rank the goals of each site uh regarding theseissues to find out which are the really important things um and where we canreally uh agree and uh yeah where we share our interests and what we can alsodo is of course developing many opinions of the problem we can also call this like perspective taking so you generatealternatives that provide Mutual gains for both sides so it's not taking one side but first of all it's about likealternatives for both sides and uh looking for areas of shared interest sowhere to meet perhaps and where to meet in the middle and then of course view the problem from alternative perspectiveso this is what we then call perspective taking so you're jumping out your own perspective and you try to find reasonand Alternatives from the different perspective to understand the perspective and to make it easier to atthe end find a common understanding so if you're thenevaluating Alternatives that you generated um you should use objective criteria so that it doesn't have have uhthe the smell for people that this is somehow the the decision is made just bysubjective criteria that somebody forced the decision and used leeway to uh yeahto to in the end uh move the decision towards uh what he or she wants right soyou should um use objective criteria and to do so you should really talk throughall the issues uh using these criteria to yeah to see which are the unimportantissues this relates back to ranking uh issues and goals of everybody involvedin the conflict and it's important to not give in to pressure if somebody istrying to pressure a decision towards a certain direction but to uh yeah toremind then everybody that we have these objective criteria with which we want to rank the Alternatives and use thesecriteria and not some subjective uh opinion or subjective weighing ofcriteria but uh the the things that we agreed upon as a group and the lastcriteria or the last idea of how to deal or avoid conflicts is of course to try again so this is more like the learningof all this so establish monitoring criterias to ensure that Agreements are kept so really to when there is anagreement to see whether this agreement is held true at the end and discuss waysin which the team can deal with similar issues in the future so this is then the learning component from one conflict tothe others so we now show different ways of how to avoid or deal with conflictsand what is important to say here that these of course are not like something that you have to pick or that this onething can help but all together they are the best way to then deal with conflictsin an organization so what did we learn in this video today so first of all welearned that resistance to change can stem from various factors so there are different factors including fear oflosing control we spoke about intolerance to adjustment periods or touh cognitive rigidity and these different factors um Can hinder then the successful implementation uh of changein an organization then we also looked about resistance that occurs on multiple levels so we talked about the rationalemotional and sociological perspective and we also highlighted that sometimessociological challenges are very hard to identify because even if they arepresent uh rational arguments might um yeah might replace replace them so eachrequires a tailed approach for resolution and then in the last step we also learned about effective conflictmanagement techniques we spoke about collabora and compromises for example umbut we looked at different forms that can help mitigate resistance and that this is essential to focus on sharedinterest and to um to think about separate people different perspective Pperspectives from the process and then to at the end maintain positive relationships while implementing changethanks a lot for watching
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