Resistance to Change Model LO792

PeterVS1@aol.com
Sat, 15 Apr 1995 11:48:39 -0400

Following-up LO776 --

Resistance to Change
A STELLA Model of a Complex System

by Peter von Stackelberg

One of the most difficult problems organizations face is
dealing with change. In the rapidly changing, highly
competitive business environment of the coming century, the
ability to rapidly and effortlessly change will distinguish
the winners from the losers. Many businesses will founder,
however, because they find themselves unable to constantly
adapt to the environment within which they exist.

Resistance to change is an on-going problem. At both the
individual and organizational level, resistance to change
impairs concerted efforts to improve performance.

The relationship between individual and organizational
resistance to change is important. An organization is a
complex system of relationships between people, leadership,
technologies and work processes. From this interaction
emerges organizational behavior, culture and performance.

These emergent properties and behaviors are tightly linked in
two directions to the lower level interactions.

Organizational resistance to change is an emergent property.
Individual resistance to change can give rise to
organizational resistance. A self-reinforcing loop of
increasing resistance can develop as individuals create a
environment in which resistance to change is the norm. That
environment in turn encourages increased resistance to change
among individual employees. The self-reinforcing nature of
this loop can be tremendously powerful, defeating repeated
attempts to break out of it.

Understanding the dynamics of resistance to change is
critical to turning around individual and organizational
resistance to change. The creation of adaptive organizations
requires a greater understanding of the systems dynamics
involved. The model of resistance to change described here
was developed in order to help better understand those
dynamics.

Basic Assumptions of the Model

The logic and basic assumptions used to develop this model of
resistance to change are:
1. Humans build mental maps which are, in effect, their
reality.
2. Changing a mental map causes a negative feeling best
described as discomfort or pain.
3. The greater the pain, the greater the resistance to
making mental map changes.
4. The greater the resistance, the fewer the number of
mental map changes.
5. Humans experience dissonance when their mental maps
are not synchronized with their external environment.
6. Changes in the external environment increase the
dissonance.
7. Increasing dissonance reduces resistance to changing
the mental map.
8. Changing a mental map decreases dissonance as the
internal and external realities are brought into closer
synchronization.

The STELLA Model

This model was developed using STELLA. This Macintosh-based
software is used to create and run dynamic systems models
using a graphical user interface.

Conditions Under Which the Model Was Run

The model was run using three different conditions:
* No change (other than the initial change event)
occurs.
* A constant rate of change occurs.
* Change occurs as a series of crises.

Results of "No Change" Run

When the model was run so that no changes other than the
initial change event occurred, there was a rapid fluctuation
at the start of the run associated with that change event.
However, the system quickly stabilized into an equilibrium in
which resistance rose and remained high. Pain associated with
mental map changes showed an almost instantaneous jump at the
start of the run, then dropped rapidly to remain low during
the balance of the run. Mental map changes dropped rapidly
from a high at the beginning of the run and remained low
throughout the balance of the run.

Results of "Constant Change" Run

When the rate of change in the system was constant, the
dynamics were different from the run in which no change
occurred. Initially the system experienced a number of
fluctuations but within a short period of time settled into a
stable pattern in which resistance to change fell even as the
total number of change events (but not the rate of change)
increased. What is particularly interesting about this run is
that both pain and dissonance increase, although they rise
relatively slowly in comparison to the number of change
events.

Results of "Periodic Crisis" Run

The behavior of this system shows some very interesting
behavior when it undergoes change as a series of periodic
crises interspersed with periods of no change. After the
fluctuations associated with the initial change event,
resistance to change drops and pain and dissonance rises as
crisis after crisis hits. The increments by which resistance
drops and pain and dissonance rises become smaller, however,
even though the magnitude of each crisis remains the same.
This indicates that the system is adjusting to the crises and
is seeking an equilibrium.

However, the system is not able to absorb the shocks of
crisis after crisis indefinitely. What the graph shows is a
broadening oscillation that appears to become chaotic.

An attempt was made to determine if this behavior was in fact
chaotic. To do this, the initial conditions were altered for
several runs. Specifically, the magnitude of a single crisis
that stressed the system was adjusted to see how the system
would react.

Interpretations

In spite of the limitations identified, this model does lead
to a number of useful insights into the nature of resistance
to change.

Resistance to change within organizations tends to bring to
the surface considerable emotion. Those who resist change are
often labeled as operating from a different agenda, as
stubborn or ill-informed, as lacking in understanding, or in
other negative, value-laden terms. One conclusion that can be
drawn from this model is that resistance to change is an
inherent part of the system's attempt to maintain a certain
level of stability. As shown by the run in which no change
occurs, the "preferred" state of the system is to come to an
fixed state. There is a tendency for people within
organizations to attempt to halt external change so that
their "internal" state does not need to be changed.

Many organizations seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. The
runs in which the system was hit with periodic crises showed
that at the onset of each crisis, resistance dropped sharply
and mental map changes jumped sharply. Then, after the crisis
passes, resistance levels out again and mental map changes
stop until the next crisis occurs. The model's reaction to
crisis seems to be supported by events within our
organizations - crisis threatens, dramatic action is taken
and then everything settles back to "normal" until the next
crisis occurs. The conclusion one can draw is that crisis is
needed to reduce resistance to change and bring about
significant changes in mental maps. The impact of crisis
after crisis is seen in the model's movement into chaotic
behavior as the stresses build in the system.

Another reaction to a constantly changing environment is to
engage in constant change. When this approach was modeled,
resistance to change decreased and mental map changes
increased as change occurred at a constant rate. From the
organizational point of view, this approach is probably the
most conducive to long-term organizational health.

Conclusion

This model appears to be a realistic, though simplified,
representation of the psychology of resistance to change. The
use of a dynamic model gives a number of insights that would
otherwise not be possible, the most dramatic of which is the
transition that this system makes from fixed to periodic to
chaotic behavior as stress is added to the system. This model
points to the underlying complexity and non-linear behavior
of the systems associated with change. This complexity and
non-linearity needs to be addressed if efficient and
effective change efforts are to take place within
organizations.

NOTE: This is an a summary of an article on organizational
and individual resistance to change. If you are interested in
a full copy of the article (including graphs from the model
runs), please contact me with your mailing address.

If you would like a copy of the resistance to change model
that can be run with the STELLA modelling language on the
Macintosh, please send me a 3.5 inch diskette formatted for a
Macintosh computer. You will need STELLA and a Macintosh to
run the model.

My address:

Peter von Stackelberg
Applied Futures, Inc.
25025 I-45 North Freeway, Suite 525
The Woodlands, TX
U.S.A. 77380