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Ready for change, resistant, or both?

Readiness for change and resistance to change are usually treated as two ends of one scale. The authors argue they are separate. A person can be high on both, or low on both.

By
Last reviewed
Type of study
Literature review
Published
2019
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At a glance

Source
Repovš, Drnovšek and Kaše (2019). Change Ready, Resistant, or Both? Exploring the Concepts of Individual Change Readiness and Resistance to Organizational Change. Economic and Business Review, 21(2). doi:10.15458/85451.82
How it was done
The authors reviewed how research has defined and used the two ideas, and compared them side by side. Literature review. It sums up earlier research and argues a position. It collects no new data.
Who took part
Published research on readiness for change and resistance to change.
Where
International literature; research team in Slovenia.

“They should be looked at in conjunction – not on a bipolar continuum but as coexisting orthogonal dimensions – to grasp the full complexity of change-related attitudes.”

What it found

  • Resistance has two parts: what people think and feel (attitude) and what people do (behaviour).
  • Readiness and resistance share roots in attitude, but one is not the mirror of the other.
  • So they should be looked at together, as two separate measures.

When the result holds

The argument is about individuals facing change at work, of any kind.

Limits

  • It is not about AI specifically.
  • It argues that the two should be measured separately. It does not test whether doing so improves decisions.

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