Challenging Resistance to Change

Dent, E.B. & Galloway Goldberg, S. (1999), "Challenging resistance to change", Journal of applied behavioral science, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 25-44

Presuming it as a received truth that there is a resistance for change is the fundamental error both as a theory and for achieving the success in an organization (Adopted from Dent & Galloway, 1999). This critical review will attempt to explain the following headings:

Author's Purpose:

The author tries to challenge the presumed perception of the existence of resistance to any change process. Dent states that "The belief in inherent resistance to change is the fundamental flaw of these change efforts" (Dent & Galloway, 1999, p.27). He argues that there is a theoretical mistake about managing with change; accepting that people resist to change. Furthermore, the author's purpose is to justify his view by challenging the idea that resistance exists within the individual and it is the manager's responsibility to handle with that resistance (Dent & Galloway, 1999).

Summary of issues / key arguments:

The author examines the question of why there is a presumption that people always resist to change and he illustrates his argument with focusing on the management textbooks and the views of the other researchers. The author might be thinking that for achieving organizational effectiveness, firstly the existing definitions and assumptions must be questioned. Thus, this issue is very important from his perspective. The tools that author uses in his argument are reasonable. There we see a good justification of his ideas with the support of the examples he gives. He seems to be using the right evidences for his argument. The tools, structure and the methods are great but I think that the problem is with his original argument that will be mentioned below. Another problem is the strict boundaries he draws in his argument. There seems like there is no possibility that the argument that he makes could also be wrong.

Summary of conclusions:

In sum there is a well presented argument with examples. The author instead of criticizing some parts of a big theory chooses to question and deny the availability of the whole theory. To proof that the current assumptions about the resistance of change is wrong he