Claudia Weber 
Change Management. Dealing with resistance during change processes in a company 

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics – Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.0, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, language: English, abstract: Change management plays a central role in many companies. Of 116 companies surveyed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2009, 38% rated this topic as ‘very important’ and a further 54% considered it ‘important’. By comparison, in 2007, 36% of respondents considered change management ‘very important’ and 50% ‘important’. In the future, even greater importance will be attached to change management: Around 95% of the companies participating in the survey expect change management to play a significant role (both ‘very important’ and ‘important’) in 2012. In contrast, the number of those giving change management a rather low to insignificant importance is falling year by year.

It is therefore clear to see that change management is becoming increasingly relevant within management tasks (cf. Capgemini Consulting, online on the Internet). The reasons prompting such change are obvious: the financial crisis and climate change in a globalizing world are just a few of the motives for companies facing completely new challenges that now have to be overcome. Change is an indispensable element for the permanent improvement of companies’ performance and competitiveness. Despite the knowledge of the necessity of organizational change, change management encounters resistance from many sides within companies. Why this is the case and how it can be dealt with will be presented in this paper.

For this purpose, it will first be defined what exactly is hidden behind the term ‘change management’ and what the reasons for its necessity are. Both the goals of change and the change process itself are described. The term ‘resistance’ is then discussed, the causes and types of resistance are presented, and its characteristics are illustrated. After the handling of resistance in change processes has been explained, the knowledge gained is deepened by means of a selected practical case. The paper concludes with a brief outlook on the future significance and development of change management.