Activity #1 Piderit (2000) believes that the definition of the term resistance must incorporate a much broader scope. She states 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” (p. 784).What is your understanding of these three types of resistance? Can you give an example of each type?Please see attachment.*1 paragraph 5-8 sentences.
rethinking_resistance_and_recognizing_ambivalence.pdf
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* Academy of Management Beview
2000, Vol. 25, No. 4, 783-794.
RETHINKING RESISTANCE AND RECOGNIZING
AMBIVALENCE: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL
VIEW OF ATTITUDES TOWARD AN
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
SANDY KRISTIN PIDERIT
Case Western Reserve University
In this article I review studies of resistance to change and advocate new research
based on a reconceptualization of individual responses to change as multidimensional attitudes. A challenging question for research and practice arises: How can we
balance the organizational need to ioster ambivalent attitudes toward change and the
individual need to minimize the potentially debilitating effects of ambivalence? I
conclude by highlighting the importance of examining the evolution of employee
responses to change over time and the need to understand responses to change
proposals that emerge from bottom-up, egalitarian change processes.
terms; for instance, practical scholars and scholarly practitioners argue that the concept might
have outlived its usefulness (Dent & Goldberg,
1999; Krantz, 1999). My purpose here is to summarize a critique of existing views of resistance
to change and to advocate a view that captures
more of the complexity of individuals’ responses
to proposed organizational changes.
In the first part of the article, I suggest that in
studies of resistance to change, researchers
have largely overlooked the potentially positive
intentions that may motivate negative responses to change. I also show how studies of
resistance have dichotomized responses to
change and, thus, somewhat oversimplified
them. Furthermore, I argue that varied emphases in the conceptualization of resistance have
slipped into the literature, blurring our sense of
the complexities of the phenomenon.
In the second part of the article, I propose a
multidimensional view of responses to proposed
organizational changes, capturing employee responses along at least three dimensions (emotional, cognitive, and intentional). Within this
view, “resistance to a change” is represented by
the set of responses to change that are negative
along all three dimensions, and “support for a
change” is represented by the set of responses
that are positive along all three dimensions.
Responses to a change initiative that are neither
consistently negative nor consistently positive,
which were previously ignored but are potentially the most prevalent type of initial response.
Adapting to changing goals and demands has
been a timeless challenge for organizations, but
the task seems to have become even more crucial in the past decade. In the for-profit sector,
global population growth and political shifts
have opened new markets for products and services at a dizzying pace. To respond to the pace
of change, organizations are adopting flatter,
more agile structures and more empowering,
team-oriented cultures. As status differences
erode, some employees are coming to expect
involvement in decisions about organizational
change. Successful organizational adaptation is
increasingly reliant on generating employee
support and enthusiasm for proposed changes,
rather than merely overcoming resistance.
The concept of resistance to change has been
widely studied, but it has limitations. Both Merron (1993) and Dent and Goldberg (1999) have
argued for retiring the phrase “resistance to
change.” The limitations of the concept can be
framed in philosophical terms; for instance, critical theorists and labor policy scholars argue
that the interests of managers should not be
privileged over the interests of workers when
studying organizational change (Jermier,
Knights, & Nord, 1994). Alternatively, the limitations of the concept can be framed in practical
I gratefully acknowledge the comments of Richard
Bagozzi, David Deeds, Jane Dutton, Loren Dyck, Phoebe Ellsworth, Eric Neilsen, Mary Grace Neville, Janet Weiss, and
the reviewers and special issue editor on earlier versions of
this work.
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Academy of Management Review
can be analyzed as cross-dimension ambivalence in employees’ responses to change.
In the third part of the article, I identify the
implications of this new view for both research
and practice. By highlighting the many other
sets of responses that can occur, this new view
shows the importance of ambivalent responses
to change for research on exit, voice, loyalty,
and neglect and for research on generating
change within organizations.
A SYNTHESIS OF PAST
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF
RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
Unfavorable Responses to Change Might Be
Motivated by the Best of Intentions
In the majority of work on resistance to
change, researchers have borrowed a view from
physics to metaphorically define resistance as a
restraining force moving in the direction of
maintaining the status quo (cf. Lewin, 1952). Furthermore, most scholars have focused on the
various “forces” that lead employees away from
supporting changes proposed by managers. As
Watson (1982) points out, managers often perceive resistance negatively, since they see employees who resist as disobedient. And as Jermier et al. put it, “The most prevalent way of
analysing resistance is to see it as a reactive
process where agents embedded in power relations actively oppose initiatives by other
agents” (1994: 9). Even if they only see employees who oppose change as short sighted, managers are tempted by the language of resistance
to treat their subordinates as obstacles.
Thus, the label of resistance can be used to
dismiss potentially valid employee concerns
about proposed changes. Of course, for a long
time in the practical literature about managing
change processes, researchers have been advising practitioners to guard against this. For example, Mary Parker Follett pointed out in the
1920s that
we shouldn’t put to … workers finished plans in
order merely to get their consent
one of two
things is likely to happen, both bad: either we shall
get a rubber-stamped consent and thus lose what
they might contribute to the problem in question,
or else we shall find ourselves with a fight on our
hands—an open fight or discontent seething underneath (reprinted in Graham, 1995: 220).
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Likewise, Lawrence (1954) warns managers to
avoid creating resistance in subordinates by assuming that they will always be opposed to
change. In the 1990s others have reissued similar warnings (Dent & Goldberg, 1999; Merron,
1993). A prominent consultant noted that the concept of resistance to change “has been transformed over the years into a not-so-disguised
way of blaming the less powerful for unsatisfactory results of change efforts” (Krantz, 1999: 42).
This tendency to dismiss employees’ objections to change simply may be another manifestation of the fundamental attribution error (Jones
& Harris, 1967); that is, managers in charge of
rolling out a change initiative blame others for
the failure of the initiative, rather than accepting their role in its failure. Employees are likely
to do the same thing—assigning blame for
failed change attempts to their managers, rather
than themselves. However, as Klein (1976) and
Thomas (1989) argue, in most research on resistance to change, researchers have taken the perspective of those in charge of implementing
change, and so scholars have written less about
the perspectives of those with less power. Perhaps scholars, as well as practitioners, need to
be cautioned against playing the blame game
unwittingly.
Fortunately, in other types of literature—not
yet well integrated into research on resistance
to change—scholars also remind us of a wider
range of reasons why employees may oppose a
proposed organizational change. For instance,
research on obedience to authority indicates
that resistance might be motivated by individuals’ desires to act in accordance with their ethical principles (Milgram, 1965; Modigliani &
Rochat, 1995). Similarly, the organizational dissent literature shows that some employee resistance to organizational actions is motivated by
more than mere selfishness (Graham, 1984,
1986). Also, recent studies of issue selling (Ashford, Rothbard, Piderit, & Dutton, 1998; Dutton,
Ashford, Wierba, O’Neill, & Hayes, 1997) indicate
that employees might try to get top management
to pay attention to issues that employees believe must be addressed in order for the organization to maintain high performance.
Rarely do individuals form resistant attitudes,
or express such attitudes in acts of dissent or
protest, without considering the potential negative consequences for themselves. This point is
documented in several studies. In the field of
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ethics, for instance, Clinard (1983) documents
the “pressures on middle management,” such as
threats to their opportunities for advancement or
to their job security, that can discourage managers from speaking up about ethical concerns.
Meyerson and Scully (1995) dramatize the dilemmas faced by change agents when judging how
far they can stretch those they wish to lead.
Rodrigues and Collinson (1995) analyze the different ways in which Brazilian employees use
humor to “camouflage and express their dissent” (1995: 740), as well as the times when camouflage was powerful (and the conditions under
which more acerbic satire was used). Thus, frivolous expression of resistance seems unlikely,
since individuals who engage in it could face
severe penalties and are aware that they should
tread lightly.
Hence, what some may perceive as disrespectful or unfounded opposition might also be
motivated by individuals’ ethical principles or
by their desire to protect the organization’s best
interests. It is worth entertaining efforts to take
those good intentions more seriously by downplaying the invalidating aspect of labeling responses to change “resistant.”
Varying Emphases in the Conceptualization of
Resistance
>
Studies of resistance would also benefit from
careful attention to the concept’s meaning. As
Davidson argues, resistance has come to include
anything and everything that workers do which
managers do not want them to do, and that workers do not do that managers wish them to do….
resort to such an essentially residual category of
analysis can easily obscure a multiplicity of different actions and meanings that merit more precise analysis in their own right (1994: 94).
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. Although these
conceptualizations overlap somewhat, they diverge in important ways. Finding a way to bring
together these varying emphases should
deepen our understanding of how employees
respond to proposed organizational changes.
Portraying resistance in terms of behavior has
been common since the earliest work on the
topic. In his early theorizing, Lewin (1952) de-
785
fined resistance by using a metaphor from the
physical sciences. In their classic study Coch
and French (1948) focused on the undesirable
behaviors of workers in response to management-imposed changes in jobs and work methods. With their quasi-experiment they examined
whether encouraging employee participation in
planning a change would reduce resistance. Although their conceptual discussion indicated
that resistance could involve undesirable behaviors and/or aggression, their measures focused on neither. Instead, the criterioh they used
to compare the treatment and control groups
was desirable behavior, in the form of compliance with the production rate standards set by
management. (While strict compliance with the
rate standards may or may not have been accompanied by undesirable behaviors or aggression, this possibility could not have been captured in the measures reported.) This study
generated a large body of work on the effects of
participative decision making (see McCaffrey,
Faerman, & Hart, 1995, for a recent review).
More recent studies of resistance also have
focused on behavior. For instance, Brower and
Abolafia (1995) define resistance as a particular
kind of action or inaction, and Ashforth and
Mael (1998) define resistance as intentional acts
of commission (defiance) or omission. Similarly,
Shapiro, Lewicki, and Devine (1995) suggest that
willingness to deceive authorities constitutes
resistance to change, and Sagie, Elizur, and
Greenbaum (1985) use compliant behavior as
evidence of reduced resistance.
In contrast, other scholars have described resistance in emotional terms. For example, Coch
and French (1948) acknowledged a more emotional component of resistance (aggression), and
in their preliminary theory of resistance described the forces that they believed produced
frustration in employees and caused the undesirable behaviors. Similarly, Vince and Broussine (1996) surfaced the responses of managers in
public service organizations to a period of
change in structure and financial constraints.
They found that managers’ responses were often
paradoxically emotional. And, finally, the ideas
of frustration and anxiety underpin Argyris and
Schon’s (1974, 1978) perspective that resistance
arises from defensive routines. The approach
that they advocate emphasizes the role of an
external consultant in surfacing the defensiveness inherent in those routines, finding ways to
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Academy of Management Review
minimize or dissipate the anxiety that reinforces
those routines, and making time for calmer consideration of how to repair them (Argyris, 1993).
As Diamond (1986) points out, although the remedy for resistance that they recommend involves
a cognitive realignment of resistors’ espoused
theories and their theories-in-use, the underlying nature of resistance is portrayed as highly
emotional.
The idea that resistance can be overcome cognitively suggests that it may include a component of negative thoughts about the change.
Watson (1982) suggests that what is often labeled as resistance is, in fact, only reluctance.
Armenakis, Harris, and Mossholder (1993) define
resistance in behavioral terms but suggest that
another state precedes it: a cognitive state they
call “(un)readiness.” A reinterpretation of the
Coch and French quasi-experiment (Bartlem &
Locke, 1981) suggests that participation might
have motivational and cognitive effects on resistance to change, also implying that cognition
is part of the phenomenon of resistance.
Each of these three emphases in conceptualizations of resistance—as a behavior, an emotion, or a belief—has merit and represents an
important part of our experience of responses to
change. Thus, any definition focusing on one
view at the expense of the others seems incomplete. Therefore, rather than privilege one conceptualization over the others, I seek to integrate
the three alternative views of resistance to
change.
A NEW VIEW OF RESPONSES TO CHANGE:
AMBIVALENT ATTITUDES
These three emphases in the conceptualization of resistance to change can be reframed in
a more integrative way by borrowing the concept of attitude from social psychology. Mindful
adaptation of the concept might be required,
because the research on attitudes does not always provide clear guidance about which dimensions of attitudes are most salient.
Multiple Dimensions of Attitudes
Early attitude theorists (Katz, 1960; Rosenberg
& Hovland, 1960) argued that attitudes are structured along three dimensions that roughly correspond with the three definitions that have
dominated research on resistance to change. I
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label these three dimensions of attitudes the
cognitive, emotional, and intentional. This conception is known as the tripartite view of attitudes (Ajzen, 1984).
In this view the cognitive dimension of an
attitude refers to an individual’s beliefs about
the attitude object. In their review of the literature on the tripartite view, Eagly and Chaiken
define this dimension as follows: “beliefs express positive or negative evaluation of greater
or lesser extremity, and occasionally are exactly
neutral in their evaluative content” (1998: 271).
The emotional dimension of an attitude refers to
an individual’s feelings in response to the attitude object. Eagly and Chaiken define this dimension as the “feelings, moods, emotions, and
sympathetic nervous-system activity that people have experienced in relation to an attitude
object and subsequently associate with it” (1998:
272).
The third dimension of attitudes is the most
complex and controversial, both because in
some studies researchers find evidence of only
two dimensions and because others who find a
third dimension label it inconsistently. The findings of past empirical studies of the tripartite
attitude structure are mixed (e.g., Bagozzi, 1978;
Breckler, 1984; Kothandapani, 1971), and as Eagly and Chaiken conclude, “Evidence supports
the empirical separability of three classes of
evaluative responses under some but certainly
not all circumstances” (1993: 13). In the traditional tripartite view, the conative dimension of
an attitude reflects an individual’s evaluations
of an attitude object that are based in past behaviors and future intentions to act. Some researchers place more emphasis on past behaviors, whereas others focus on future intentions.
In some cases a separate attitude dimension
concerning intentions or behavior has been
identified, but in other cases intentions are so
loosely connected with other dimensions of attitudes that they have been treated as entirely
separate constructs.
In the context considered here, because an
employee facing a newly proposed organizational change is responding to a novel event, the
conative dimension is more likely to reflect intentions than past behaviors. (The employee
might not find the change process particularly
novel, but the specific proposal is likely to have
some novel aspects.) Also, it seems more desirable in this applied context to treat behavior as
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a separate construct so that the mutual influences of attitudes and behavior on one another
are not buried in an already complex set of
issues. In other words, it is useful to distinguish
between an intention to resist at the attitudinal
level and dissent or protest at the level of actual
behavior, which might or might not be planned.
By “an intention” I mean a plan or resolution to
take some action, rather than a plan to try to
achieve some goal (Bagozzi, 1992).
Much of the work on resistance in labor process theory (e.g., Jermier et al., 1994), as well as
some recent work on extrarole behaviors, such
as taking charge (e.g., Morrison & Phelps, 1999),
focuses on dissent or protest, whether intentional, habitual, or spontaneous. Distinguishing
between intention and behavior will allow more
careful study of the connections between the
two concepts. Whether the intentional dimension is sufficiently associated with individuals’
cognitive and emotional responses to be treated
as a dimension of an employee’s attitude remains an empirical question in the context of an
attitude about a proposed organizational
change.
One remaining contentious question in attitude research concerns the causal relationships
among the dimensions. Fiske and Pavelchak
(1986) label the two dominant positions in the
debate the “piecemeal” and “category-based”
views. In the piecemeal view, advanced by
scholars such as Zanna and Rempel (1988), it is
posited that variations in evaluation along the
particular dimensions of an attitudinal response
will cause variations in global attitude. In the
category-based view (Ajzen, 1984; Davis & Ostrom, 1984), the global attitude is viewed as primary; changes in the global evaluation are modeled as causes of variation in the cognitive,
emotional, and intentional dimensions, rather
than as results of variation in those dimensions.
Unfortunately, these views are still the subject
of continuing debate in social psychology, and
competing interpretations and new data are still
being advanced.
In summary, questions of how the multiple
dimensions of employee responses to change
should be defined—and how they …
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