Resistance to Change. The case of a shoe manufacturer (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: -, , language: English, abstract: An enterprise is a dynamic sociotechnical system which should survive in a continuously changing environment to stand the external pressure, satisfying thereof the demands of its external and internal customers.

The main goal of every system is its preservation in time. This preservation can be achieved through its continuous adaptation to external and internal pressures and thus through constant change and evolution. The concept of evolution involves the concept of change. Therefore, change is a concept closely linked to survival, growth and success of any system.

However, a key element of each system is the man - employee. The employee with his/her work contributes directly to achieving the objectives pursued and leads and organizes the continued growth and development of the system to which s/he belongs. The employee as human nature seeks the development and pleasantly accept change . Without the effort to change, the society would not have progressed as well as technology, thinking and science. From a psychological point of view, the man would feel empty, sterile, unfinished, s/he would be inactive and passive, would lose confidence and creativity.

However, there are many studies and rich literature, claiming that the resistance of employees in an organizational change is almost automatic and certainly unexpected, and it is a key problem that the management of each organization / company has to face successfully to complete the task of introducing some change.

This paper focuses on this issue, approaching it both theoretically and practically. The results are of considerable interest, since the study was based on a fairly wide range of literature, but it has also successfully used a modern method of processing questionnaires which helped to export some initial conclusions.

The research was conducted in November 2004 in a major shoe manufacturer in Greece owning a wide retail chain. The sample was fairly small and limitations of the research are considered the relative small sample of the respondents as well as the fact that it concerned only one company.