Why organizations resist change.

Organizational cultural inertia: Cultural inertia refers to the status of the unwillingness to adapt to new ways of doing things. Most organizations are normally trapped by cultural inertia premised on the assumption that all decisions should necessarily be guided by how the organization has been able to handle things in the past. Sometimes this works against the organization by hindering the firm from realizing meaningful transformation to compete in the dynamic business environment. Kodak Company is an example of what can happen to an organization that resists change.

Vested interest: Sometimes vested interests can be the main source of change resistance. Whenever there is a change agent, there are always others who are against the change because they enjoy the benefits of the status quo. For example it may be the desire for a change agent to enable efficiency in service delivery in the public sector. However, there are those who benefit greatly from the inefficiency by providing brokerage services. This is particularly true for services such as land registration and transfer services.

Loss of job security: There is also the concern that employees risk losing their jobs as a result of a change intervention. This is normally true in many cases where the organization seeks to do away with certain level of managements and replaces them with the agile teams as is currently being witnessed in Safaricom. In such a case the planned change may face formidable resistance from the top level managers who risk losing their jobs as a result of restructuring.

Fear of the unknown: Workers are carried by the fear that the new social set-up arising out of the change will be less satisfying than the present set up. There is also the fear of failure which is due to the lack of confidence that by the actors that the change process will yield favourable results.

Lack of understanding on the benefits: The main reason for resistance to change is mainly due to lack of understanding of the benefits of the proposed change. Sometimes those who oppose change do so not based knowledge but due to failure of these concerned individuals to grasp the rational of the change being implemented. Lack of understanding may be as a result of poor communication strategy or even a feeling that the change is being implemented as a form of retribution and not leadership.