Resistance to Change and Theories to Mitigate.

On the basis of a survey by McKinsey out of 1536 companies that went through the change in an organization only 38% of the company managers’ stated that it helped them succeed in enhancing performance(McKinsey,2007). As Kotter mentions that change is not a spontaneous process rather it is a process that passes through various phases(Kotter,2007). Whereas Kreitner says that change can be compared to the stone that is dropped in a pond as it causes ripples and the consequences are unpredictable

Resistance to change can take many different forms like the decrease in productivity, strikes. Which can be very troublesome for the organization (Lawrence,1969).There are a few ways that the resistance to change won’t be such a hindrance in the organization (Lawrence,1969):

•  Employees should be involved in making the change happen
• Generally, the thing resisted is social change, not the technical change. Which can easily be observed from the tube strikes happening in London. As employees were not made a part of the change. Hence, they are resisting to the change by tube strikes

 Some Leaders overcome this problem by Lewin’s method(Lunenburg,2010). He mentioned that we should look in any changing situation in terms of it’s driving forces (Lunenburg,2010). There ought to be an equilibrium between driving forces and resisting forces. Resistance to change can be overcome by (Lunenburg,2010)

•  Educating and communicating
• Participation and involvement of the employees
• Facilitation and support
• Negotiation and agreement.

According to Lewin, there are three stages that lead to change

• Unfreezing
• Change
• Refreeze

 In this process, firstly it is ensured that employees are ready for change and can help the organization to bring the change. Which is then followed by the change in this step the change is practically applied. Finally, when the desired change occurs it is then made permanent and then Business, as usual, goes on.

 The change process can be linked to self-esteem and impact on performance which is mentioned by Burns

As can be seen from the figure above that how performance and self-esteem fluctuate with the change in an organization. During denial and defense phase the performance remains consistent whereas self-esteem increases and then decreases. During discarding and adaptation, both of them are at its lowest finally when there is a realization both the factors increases

 In the financial sector, Lewin’s model must be used as if there is any disruption it can lead to a very ugly phase. So the employees should be made aware of the change and there should be a two-way communication. An autocratic leadership style won’t probably be very helpful for the financial sector. The Democratic leadership style and Lewin’s method should be followed for effective results. Goal-setting theory and Herzberg's theory must be used so as to keep employees motivated and ethical.