Employees as enablers of change
The assumption that employees will resist change drove research into the actions of managers and workers who made the agency the sole “property of an elite coalition of senior executives” (Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 2004, p. 176). At the same time, the perspective relegated all workers into a category of homogenous resisters who had no power to change the organization but held power to block the changes the organization needed. Contemporary research is starting to question the assumption that employees will automatically resist change.
Analyzing traditional research from a different perspective, Drazin, et al. (2004) expose a crack in the traditional perspective on resistance by concluding that employees significantly influenced the changes that took place in the organization. This exposes an important point that tends to be missing from traditional perspectives: people have the capacity to recognize necessary change, and the ability to engage in driving change. Dent and Goldberg (1999) propose that the roots of employee resistance are not necessarily in the people but in the organizational obstacles that inhibit change.
Kotter (1996) supported this argument in a study of 100 companies that showed employees typically wanted to change; however, change was blocked not by the employees, but by systemic obstacles, like policy, process, and structure. This highlights the importance of a systems perspective for identifying interacting barriers to change. By having a myopic focus on employee resistance, leaders can overlook the organizational barriers to change, while missing the opportunity to tap employees as a powerful force for addressing the problem.
Reay, Golden-Biddle, and Germann (2006) provide additional evidence that employees may not be the hurdle that the traditional perspective sees by showing how existing employees can be vital forces for organizational change because they have intimate experience with the systemic barriers to change. The traditional perspective predicts that established employees will resist change because their work behaviors are fixed, requiring external interventions that unfreeze the status quo (Lewin, 1951; 1947) while eliminating obstacles to change (Kotter, 1996). This can mean replacing resistant workers with willing workers to accelerate change initiatives. However, in a four-year study of two Canadian medical facilities, Reay, et al. found that “embedded” employees contributed to change initiatives by applying their experience, connections, and familiarity with the culture and people.
Reay, et al. (2006) concluded that insiders could accomplish change that outsiders could not because the insiders held deep knowledge of structure, culture, and politics to drive the changes they want. Regardless of how willing and moldable new employees might be, they could face the same structural and political barriers faced by the employees they replaced. Considering the structural, cultural, political, and cognitive components of “embeddedness” provides an opportunity to understand how established employees create change.
Woodman and Dewett (2004) offer a model that provides insights about sources of resistance through understanding the organizational influences on individual behavior. The antecedents of individual change include organizational socialization processes, organizational training, organizational change programs, and managerial behaviors. These antecedents can have intentional and unintentional influences on individual change. These effects are moderated by changeability, depth, and time. Individual change encompasses changes in behavior and changes in cognitive, affective, and conative characteristics of the individual. Fully understanding organizational change requires understanding how individuals influence the organization and how the organization changes individuals. Understanding individual change journeys within an organizational construct can provide a more complete understanding of organizational change.