Managing Resistance to Change in SEAM

Resistance to change has been recognized as an initial hurdle in organization development (OD) since Koch and French (1948) and Lewin (1952) first formulated the principles of OD in general and the Force-Field Analysis in particular. Deloitte and Touche’s study of 400 organizations led them to conclude that resistance is the primary reason for the failure of change efforts (cited in Erwin & Garman, 2010), and as high as 70% of change efforts fail (Aiken & Keller, 2009). Clearly, managing resistance must be considered as an essential part of change strategy.