Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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exploring their constituent parts and their interactions, and is not
restrictive (Rushton, 2003).
HSMC seek to model the real world environment, with a view to
optimising its performance in accordance to pre-determined ends and
objectives. Therefore, HSM assume that the real world of the workplace
can be made to work more effectively and efficiently via systematic and
pre-determined ends, with an implicit need for the use of quantification
and optimisation. SSM, however, take the view that the world is complex
and dynamic, and as such the use of hard systems methods with its fixed
and pre-determined outcomes is unsuitable. Therefore SSM are very often
used in order to emphasise the importance of individual contributions to
the organisation.
As SSM maintain, implicit in any organisational change initiative are
the individuals that make up the change and the way in which these
individuals take to the change is important. Therefore resistance of
organisational change is very important in the change process.
2b) Resistance to Organisational Change
According to Szabla (2007), planned organisational change
initiatives have a poor success rate. Indeed both Hammer (1996) and
Champy (1995) claim that more than half of all organisational change
efforts studied failed. Although researchers have cited various obstacles
to organisational change, including factors such as politics and conflict
between groups, Szabla (2007) suggests that human resistance to change
is the main obstacle to successful outcomes. Individual ability to adapt to
changeable situations is a desirable characteristic in organisations which
are often more fast paced and dynamic today than in the recent past.
Despite this it is often individuals or groups of employees who resist
change processes within their workplace. An understanding of this
resistance concept is therefore integral to successful change outcomes.
Resistance to change as a concept came into the literature on
organisational change through psychoanalysis and the human relations
movement (Curtis & White, 2002). A review of existing literature suggests