Resistance is not the enemy: four theories of why staff push back

Suppose a 40-person dry-goods distributor in the Mekong Delta has just replaced its order notebook with a new order-entry tool. Three weeks in, the owner finds the system short of many orders that the warehouse has already shipped. Staff nod in the meeting, yet the notebook is still on the desk. Should the owner persuade harder, fix the tool, renegotiate how people work, or hire people who adapt more easily? Four theories of resistance to change offers four readings of the same behaviour.

When staff don't use a new system, should you diagnose first or act first?

Diagnose first. The same outward behaviour can come from four different causes, and a wrong guess means the wrong medicine: persuasion for people who feel a promise was broken, or extra training for people who fear losing their hold on their own customer list.

How do the four theories of resistance differ?

They differ in where they look for the cause: inside people's heads, in how deep the change cuts, in the promises between two parties, or in temperament.

Cognitive dissonance: the gap between what people believe and what they do creates tension, and people close it by changing the behaviour or rationalising the belief (Festinger, 1957). According to the framework, beliefs only change for real when people have a say.

Depth of intervention: Harrison gauges depth by how value-laden, emotionally charged and central to the individual's sense of self an issue is (Harrison, 1970). The framework infers that the more a change reaches into those things, the higher the potential resistance.

Psychological contract: Rousseau describes it as an individual's belief in a reciprocal obligation between themselves and the organisation, and discusses what happens when such contracts are violated (Rousseau, 1989). The framework reads it as unspoken, two-way expectations about effort, job security and fair treatment; when one side feels an expectation has been breached, resistance appears.

Dispositional resistance: each person's own disposition shapes how they react. Oreg's scale splits it into four factors: routine seeking, emotional reaction to imposed change, cognitive rigidity and short-term focus (Oreg, 2003). The framework adds that disposition does not determine behaviour towards any one initiative, which is why it warns against treating it as destiny.

In the 40-person company, which behaviour suggests which theory?

The table below is a hypothetical example; none of it comes from a real business.

The last row belongs to none of the four theories, on purpose.

Offer choice, redesign, renegotiate or screen: which should you try first?

Try the cheapest option that still fits the diagnosis. Often that is a question, not a training course.

Offering choice fits when behaviour contradicts what people say they believe and the company has room for more than one way of working. It does not fit when the system forces everyone to use it one way.

Redesigning with the people involved, or choosing the depth, fits when the change touches something people regard as theirs. Harrison gives two criteria: intervene no deeper than needed for a lasting solution, and no deeper than the energy and resources of the client can be committed to (Harrison, 1970). It does not fit when it becomes an excuse for more meetings while the tool stays the same.

Renegotiating fits when people can name a specific promise that was broken or changed. It works only if the company is ready to say honestly which commitments stand and which no longer do.

Screening has the most limits. By Oreg's account, the scale captures the individual-difference component of resistance (Oreg, 2003). It helps to explain why two people in the same role react differently. It does not work as the sole filter when behaviour is off because of the tool or a promise, since removing people cures neither.

In the 40-person company, you could try four steps:

1. Write down what you can see, such as "keeping the notebook in parallel", and drop labels like "lazy" or "set in their ways".
2. Ask a few people in different roles one open question: "What is this tool making harder for you?"
3. Sort the answers into the table above and change exactly one thing in the group that appears most.
4. If behaviour does not move, do not raise the dose: test another hypothesis.

Is "resistance" really the employees' fault?

Not necessarily. Dent and Goldberg's criticism targets the concept of "resistance" itself, not any one of the four theories (their paper predates Oreg's scale by four years). They argue that "resistance to change" is a widely accepted mental model, held at every level of the organisation, that interferes with carrying out change (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). In their account, Lewin introduced the term as a systems concept; the term travelled while its context stayed behind, so the problem came to be read as psychological, employees against managers (Dent and Goldberg, 1999).

To be fair to the paper: its abstract does not say nobody will object to a change. It says that accepting this model confuses our understanding of change dynamics (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). That fits the last row of the table. If an employee points to a real fault in the tool and the manager files it under "resistance", the label has hidden information.

A hypothetical example shows the difference. Suppose the company pays sales staff a bonus on monthly revenue, and data entry eats the very hours they use for calling customers. Staff are then doing exactly what the system rewards. That is the idea behind resistance as a product of the system: it arises from conflicting goals inside the organisation, not only from people. More persuasion will not remove that conflict. Changing the bonus or the process will.

Use the four theories as four questions to put to other people, not as four labels to stick on them. That fits if you are ready to listen and fix the tool when needed. It does not fit if you have already judged each person before asking.

Going deeper: where do the four theories come from, and what are their limits?

The four sources come from four different research questions, spread over more than forty years: a book on cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), an article on choosing the depth of organisational intervention (Harrison, 1970), an article on psychological and implied contracts (Rousseau, 1989), and an article developing an individual differences measure of resistance to change (Oreg, 2003).

Harrison's paper has the clearest structure to dig into. He ranks intervention strategies by increasing depth: operations analysis, management by objectives, the Managerial Grid, the T-group and task group therapy. As depth increases, so do the costs, the risk of unintended consequences for individuals and the dependence on the special competence of the change agent (Harrison, 1970).

The first limit: by their abstracts, Harrison wrote for consultants choosing an intervention method, and Rousseau describes how contracts form, hold and are violated; neither abstract mentions resistance. Linking them to resistance, or using depth to read reactions to an order-entry system, is the framework's extension.

The second limit: all four theories sit at the individual level. They say little about structure, incentives and conflicting goals inside the system, which is where Dent and Goldberg direct attention when they treat resistance as a systems concept (Dent and Goldberg, 1999).

For another catalogue of reasons people oppose change, see Kanter's ten reasons people resist change.