Abstract:
In recent years, organisational changes have become a norm because of factors
such as globalisation, innovation, and rapid technological changes. Organisations
must be flexible to be sustainable and gain competitive advantage. The recent
COVID-19 outbreak has also necessitated organisations to restructure the way they
do business to respond to the negative impact that the pandemic brought to
businesses. Despite organisational changes becoming common, the implementation
of change initiatives in organisations are said to be mostly unsuccessful. These
failures cost organisations large amounts of money. One of the known reasons why
organisational changes fail is employee resistance to organisational changes.
Employees are key in the implementation of organisational changes and their buyin
is crucial for the successful implementation of internally driven organisational
changes.
The objective of this research was to explore ways in which leaders encourage
employees to enthusiastically adopt internally driven organisational changes. A
qualitative study was done which focused on employees in the professional
accounting and consulting sector in South Africa. The data was collected from
fourteen employees using semi-structured interviews.
The study revealed that employee resistance can be a product of various factors
such as lack of, or poor communication, exclusion of employees from the change
process, perceived negative impact of the change to employees, fear of job losses
and perceived benefit of the changes to the organisation. Furthermore, the study
revealed that social identity plays a crucial role in encouraging employees to
enthusiastically adopt organisational changes. Employees who felt like the needs of
their social groups were considered during the implementation of organisational
changes did not resist the changes. Lastly, the findings showed that leaders play an
important role in influencing employee attitudes for internally driven organisational
changes.
