Obstacles and Resistance to Organizational Change in the New Post-COVID-19 Environment

Introduction

Leaders initiate change to increase competitive advantage and drive organizational sustainability, agility, and flexibility in their respective hypercompetitive industries. While organizational change is inevitable, uncertainty perpetually accompanies organizational change management processes. Organizational change management models are either processual or descriptive (Parry et al., 2014). Processual models detail the sequential steps within the process, thus providing a prescribed route along which the change process unfolds, while descriptive models highlight the success factors and variables that affect organizational performance and the success of organizational change projects. (Errida & Lotfi, 2021; Parry et al., 2014). Irrespective of the organizational change management model employed, employees’ resistance was historically and remained primary among the myriad of challenges that inevitably accompanies organizational change initiatives (Ahmad & Chowdhury, 2021; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Tanner, 2023).

The declaration of an impending organizational change exercise often triggers employees’ negative perceptions, anxiety, and a threat to their job security (Ahmad & Chowdhury, 2021; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Li et al., 2021, p. 201). As the organizational change exercise progresses, if not managed effectively, the lack of a holistic new vision and communication (in the form of full disclosure) subsequently fuels employees’ mistrust of leadership, frustration, and uncertainty (Ahmad & Chowdhury, 2021; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979; Li et al., 2021). Uncertainty often breeds resistance to organizational change (S. Srivastava & Agrawal, 2020); hence the organizational change process must be managed effectively using the requisite change management model. Considering the added component of inevitable challenges, whether the organizational change initiative occurs via the earlier organizational change models or other processes such as business process re-engineering (BPR) coined by Hammer and Champy (1993); Six Sigma (Singh & Rathi, 2019); the Toyota way for lean production (Soliman, 2020; Tsukada, 2013) or organizational development (D. R. Brown & Harvey, 2021); there is no guarantee that the organizational change process will be successful.

The World Health Organization's Director General declaring the rapid global spread of Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as a public health emergency of international concern (United Nations, 2020) triggered organizational change on an unprecedented scale. The announcement precipitated and propagated the first global, mass, synchronous, unplanned organizational change when globally, organizational leaders sent employees home to work remotely (B. A. Brown & Heitner, 2022). Without other options, many organizational leaders enacted mandatory, rapid, and drastic organizational changes, whether or not the organization's capacity allowed for such rapid adaptation (Choflet et al., 2021). Thus, traditional organizational change management models built on a planned (either processual or descriptive) format and allowing time for a sequential unfolding of the change process may have proven insufficient or irrelevant during the rapid, unpredictable, unfolding turbulence associated with the unexpected arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic (Choflet et al., 2021; Geroche & Yang, 2022). The purpose of this chapter is to (a) review the literature on organizational change, with specific reference to the obstacles and resistance to organizational change; and (b) provide recommendations to prevent the incubation or proliferation of said obstacles and resistances, especially considering the burgeoning usage of virtual teams (and remote working) owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.