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Comment on `Challenging `Resistance to Change.'

Article  in  The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science · March 1999

DOI: 10.1177/0021886399351004

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The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
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Comment on "Challenging ‘Resistance to Change’"

James Krantz
Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 1999; 35; 42
DOI: 10.1177/0021886399351004

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THE JOURNAL
Krantz / COMMENT
OF APPLIED
ON DENTBEHAVIORAL
AND GOLDBERG
SCIENCEMarch 1999

Comment on “Challenging
‘Resistance to Change’ ”

James Krantz
TRIAD Consulting Group

Intuitively, the argument put forward by Dent and Goldberg (in this issue) is compel-
ling. The concept of resistance to change, which can be traced to Lewin’s systems
approach, has been transformed over the years into a not-so-disguised way of blaming
the less powerful for unsatisfactory results of change efforts. How many times, after
all, have we seen organizations attempt to change without tackling the really difficult
issues, whether they be issues of structure, compensation, and so on? When the magi-
cal thinking comes to a crashing disappointment, blaming the lower-downs for being
resistant is a readily available explanation (perhaps a kind of mantra) that can be mobi-
lized to account for the distressing results. Dent and Goldberg argue that this cycle has
become a deeply habituated way of thinking by managers, so much so that it qualifies
as the kind of assumption that goes beyond explaining events to the point of constitut-
ing them and serving as “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
My struggle with this article concerns the elements of the argument that the authors
put forward to demonstrate their thesis. Most important, some of the major compo-
nents of their argument do not support the conclusions they ask us to draw from them,
and along the way they say some things that I think are either confused or at times
wrong. The following points elaborate my response:
1. The authors are trying to describe the intellectual history of the concept of
“resistance to change” to illustrate both how the idea has evolved into one that places
irrational blame and to demonstrate a convergence of thinking among scholars in order
to underline the assumptive status of the idea. Unfortunately, they use mainstream

James Krantz is a principal of TRIAD Consulting Group, a management consulting firm based in New York
City.

THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE, Vol. 35 No. 1, March 1999 42-44
© 1999 NTL Institute
42

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 Krantz / COMMENT ON DENT AND GOLDBERG 43

textbooks as their source of data, leaving several open questions: What kind of data is
this, really? What does a thematic analysis of textbooks actually tell us? Do textbooks
reliably exemplify the field of organizational behavior (OB), of organization develop-
ment, and of managerial practice? If they do exemplify the field of OB, what do we
then, in turn, know about managerial practice? There are just too many leaps implied
by using OB textbooks to illustrate managerial practices.
2. The data provide an inconsistent reading, in any case. The authors quote several
early authors to show how the concept drifted from its original systemic moorings
toward the more psychologically blaming notion. Yet in several instances, the quoted
sections do not really support the argument the authors seem to be making. Lawrence,
for example, distinguishes between root causes and the symptom of “resistance.” He
focuses almost exclusively on root causes of resistance that do not reside in the “resis-
tant employee” but rather in organizational factors, that is, job definitions, role of
administrator, communication practices, and so on. Other authors included point to
qualities of the planned change effort, not to the resistant employees, and in some cases
blame is explicitly laid at the feet of management. The data do, in my view, show how
widely shared the idea became in the early 1950s but do not really illustrate that it
made, or how it made, an insidious turn in connotation.
3. Conceptually, the article takes some twists and turns that seem to undermine the
overall argument. For example, the authors focus on a key shift in the meaning of resis-
tance, from a systemic idea in Lewin’s original scheme to a purely psychological (and
at times moralistic) one in which “workers” resist management’s efforts to change.
What seems most distressing to the authors is the way that blame enters the picture.
Even if one does embrace a psychological concept of resistance, the authors seem to
suggest, a more refined understanding of peoples’ reluctance to embrace new
arrangements can lead to better outcomes and to an empathic rather than blaming
approach to resistance. But the authors are susceptible to the same kind of reasoning
for which they criticize managers, except that instead of blaming workers, they blame
managers. If claiming that blame and recrimination are the dysfunctional results of
using a certain mental model, then it does not really work to use the same model and
just switch the actors around. Yet several times, and in several ways, the authors indi-
cate that the workforce is not the problem—managers are. It seems that their own psy-
chological agenda—perhaps one of redeeming maligned workers—gets them a bit off
track here.
Likewise, there are other times when they seem to lose their focus, and possibly for
the same reason. At times they reach for conceptual anchors, such as the concepts of
mental model or nonequilibrium systems thinking, that require more grounding and
exploration than is provided to serve as integral aspects of their article. And even then,
these are neither essential nor add much to the basic argument, as far as I understand it.
Another example of overreach comes with several claims, such as, “People do not
resist change,” only those aspects of change that decrease their material wellbeing,
such as “loss of status, loss of pay, or loss of comfort” (p. 26). Maybe so, but this is a
questionable assertion that I found distracting. I, for one, believe that people at all lev-
els of organizational life do resist change because they use familiar, existing arrange-
ments to help protect themselves against the anxieties that are stimulated by

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 44 THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE March 1999

membership in group life. From a psychoanalytic perspective, resistance arises when

people are faced with losing their avenues for helping them cope with painful fears and
anxieties and are thus more psychically vulnerable.
Yet I think the authors could make their core argument just as well regardless.
Whether or not people resist change, the concept has been distorted and used to pro-
vide managers with an easy, blame-shifting explanation for a far more complex reality
that undoubtedly implicates them as well. I see the challenge here as restoring the idea
of resistance to change to a nonblaming perspective rather than declaring it illegitimate
because it has been used in an injurious way.
Overall, I applaud the authors for taking on the corrosive and destructive use of the
concept of resistance to change. I welcome their efforts to challenge what they call the
“received truth” that leads to an unquestioning, knee-jerk use of this, or any, idea. And
I see their efforts to expose the destructive distorting of a valid social science concept
into an instrument of blame and self-idealization as an important contribution to the
seam of theory and practice. However, they do not yet make a compelling argument to
support or illuminate this compelling idea. And I am left wondering about the extent to
which their zeal to redress the injury caused by the misuse of social science contributes
to their tendency to lose focus.

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