A System Dynamics Model of Resistance to Organizational Change : The Role of Participatory Strategies

The literature on organizational change and resistance to change is contradictory. Some scholars find resistance a hindrance to successful change (traditional paradigm), whereas others find it a valuable source (modern paradigm). The objective of this study is to enhance our understanding of how resistance affects organizational change by providing a coherent system dynamics perspective. Based on interviews, expert modelling and group modelling, this inductive case study develops a causal loop diagram that displays eight interacting feedback loops to explain resistance to change and the role that participatory strategies play in addressing this. The model contributes to the theoretical debate on how resistance affects change by providing propositions that integrate the traditional and modern paradigms. When managers face decisions about when to increase, stabilize or decrease the use of participatory strategies, our findings imply to base these decisions upon currently dominating feedback loops, such as the Stress Trap or Slow Trap.(VLID)334020

Conforming, accommodating, or resisting? How parents in academia negotiate their professional identity

This study describes how parents in academia negotiate their professional identity in relation to dominant discourses of science as a calling. Based on in-depth interviews with men and women academics in a Dutch university, five discursive strategies are distilled that reconcile contradictory claims of academia and parenthood. Parents are conforming, suffering or fighting dominant discourses, are optimistic about or pragmatically arranging academia and parenthood. These discursive strategies illustrate agency of parents, simultaneously subscribing to dominant discourses and negotiating alternative stances. Furthermore, from focus groups with leaders we distilled how the material structure of different schools, reflected in the rules and procedures regulating standards to which institutions and individuals are held, sets limits to discursive strategies that academics adopt. We identify the constraints and room for agency and argue that agency can only lead to transformation when transcending individual awareness by moving towards collective action

Conforming, accommodating, or resisting?:How parents in academia negotiate their professional identity

This study describes how parents in academia negotiate their professional identity in relation to dominant discourses of science as a calling. Based on in-depth interviews with men and women academics in a Dutch university, five discursive strategies are distilled that reconcile contradictory claims of academia and parenthood. Parents are conforming, suffering or fighting dominant discourses, are optimistic about or pragmatically arranging academia and parenthood. These discursive strategies illustrate agency of parents, simultaneously subscribing to dominant discourses and negotiating alternative stances. Furthermore, from focus groups with leaders we distilled how the material structure of different schools, reflected in the rules and procedures regulating standards to which institutions and individuals are held, sets limits to discursive strategies that academics adopt. We identify the constraints and room for agency and argue that agency can only lead to transformation when transcending individual awareness by moving towards collective action