DDBA 8582 Week 10 Change Resistance Analysis Example

Who Loses What When the Insurer Becomes More Flexible: A Resistance Analysis Mapping Each Group's Loss, Arguing That Much of the Expected Objection Reads Real Costs Accurately, and Deciding Which Losses to Compensate, Redesign or Accept

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8582: An HR Plan for Organizational Agility

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Who Loses What When the Insurer Becomes More Flexible: A Resistance Analysis Mapping Each Group's Loss, Arguing That Much of the Expected Objection Reads Real Costs Accurately, and Deciding Which Losses to Compensate, Redesign or Accept

The Loss Map

The agility plan assembled over the term asks different groups at the composite Iowa insurer to give something up. The map records what each loses, how visible the loss is to them and how they are likely to respond.

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Table 1

Losses by Group

Is the Resistance Accurate?

Ford et al. (2008) argued that change leaders often blame pushback on the people receiving a change, as if it were irrational, when it may instead reflect legitimate concerns, the change agents' own actions such as broken agreements or poor communication, and information agents need. Piderit (2000) argued that responses to change are frequently mixed rather than simply for or against, so that people may agree with a change's aims while doubting particular parts of it.

Applied here, most expected objections read real costs accurately. The specialists are right that practice on a secondary type takes time from their specialty; the Week 5 depth ledger counted it. Managers are right that releasing people within ten days leaves them short; the Week 7 redesign offered backfill priority because of it. The advisory council is right that a deadline overrides seniority rules it negotiated. Treating these objections as attitude problems would ignore costs the plan itself acknowledges.

Some resistance would be produced by the rollout rather than the plan. If redeployment in Scenario C were announced without saying who will move and how pay is protected, anxiety and early departures would follow from uncertainty, not from the move itself.

Decisions

Compensate: specialists who maintain a chain link receive the two-module pay premium from Week 8, and their practice time is scheduled rather than squeezed. Redesign: the release deadline is negotiated with the advisory council, preserving seniority as a tiebreaker among volunteers before the deadline applies, and staff in the shared core keep a primary role title. Accept: managers lose some staffing control; the plan accepts that loss and counts releases on their scorecards so it is recognized. For redeployed staff, the rollout will name affected roles, the 12-month pay protection and the training schedule in the first communication.

The Group That Gains

Member services permanent staff lose nothing and gain fewer agency colleagues to train. Broschak and Davis-Blake (2006) found that mixing standard and nonstandard workers strained relationships among standard workers, so this group's support is likely and worth enlisting.

Timing the Communications

The order of communication matters as much as the content. The advisory council should see the release deadline before managers do, since it overrides rules the council negotiated, and managers should hear about backfill priority in the same meeting that announces the deadline. Specialists should be told about the pay premium before being asked to train a neighbor. Staff likely to be redeployed should hear first from their own supervisor, with a written summary of pay protection, rather than from a general announcement.

Measuring Resistance

Delays in releases, training completion rates and early departures among affected groups will show whether the decisions worked.

Losses Not Compensated

Some losses will not be compensated: specialists' unique status cannot be restored once a neighbor is qualified, and the plan should say so plainly rather than promise otherwise.

Revisiting the Map

The map will be revised after the first scenario activation, when actual responses can be compared with the predictions here. Groups whose response differs from the prediction will be interviewed to learn why.

Early Signals

Rising release delays would be the first sign that managers' losses were underestimated.

Limits

Likely responses are predictions from interviews with six managers and two council members, not observed behavior.

References

Broschak, J. P., & Davis-Blake, A. (2006). Mixing standard work and nonstandard deals: The consequences of heterogeneity in employment arrangements. Academy of Management Journal, 49(2), 371-393. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.20786085

Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235

Piderit, S. K. (2000). Rethinking resistance and recognizing ambivalence: A multidimensional view of attitudes toward an organizational change. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 783-794. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.3707722