solution

The chief executive of Tele-A-Comm, a large telecommunications company, wanted to restructure the organization so product leaders would have more power than the executives in charge of each region. The regional executives tried to prevent this restructuring because it would weaken their power and possibly reduce their salaries in the long term. The product leaders also put up some resistance because they felt that things worked the way they were.

The resistance from the product leaders is an example of resistance due to

• incongruent organizational systems.

• negative valence of change.

• breaking routines.

• fear of the unknown.

• not-invented-here syndrome.

Triple A Office Supplies is about to introduce a new customer service program that will affect all of its 355 sales and service employees. Job duties will be changed and the employee reward system will be altered to fit this new customer focus. Moreover, the company wants to improve the efficiency of work processes, thereby removing some of the comfortable (and often leisurely) routines that employees have followed over the years. Top management is concerned about what types of forces resisting change the company will potentially experience during this change process.

Triple A attempts to assist the change process by putting employees in direct contact with customers. Here, the company is trying to

• negotiate with the employees.

• induce organizational learning.

• use the stress management technique.

• coerce the employees to make a decision.

• create an urgency for change.