Traditionally, researchers and experts have seen RTC as within the individual, often believing

that it reflects “attempts by individuals to protect themselves from change” (Burnes, 2015).
(Bovey & Hede, 2001)He argued that when individuals face major organizational changes, they
react. The process, he wrote, consists of four stages: "initial denial, resistance, gradual search,
and final commitment.” Based on a wide review of the RTC literature. (Dent & Goldberg, ,
1999) Researchers and change management experts have always considered RTC to be
something inside the individual. They represent RTC such as fear, frustration, natural aggression,
emotionality, mistrust, personality conflict and personal uncertainty. In this spirit, scholars and
practitioners also regularly see resistance as an example of rheumatology, as a defense practice,
“thoughts and actions used to protect individuals’, groups’, and organizations’ usual way of
dealing with reality “and as something that change creators need to overcome (Argyris, 1985;
Nord & Jermier, 1994; Piderit, 2000).

RTC is a concrete example of looking inside an individual (Schein, 1991), process consultation.
According to Schein, the main role of consultants is to help managers (consultees) overcome the
defense and denial engendered by processes of organizational change (Fincham & Clark, 2002).
In writing about process consultation, (Schein, 1991) encouraged consultants to develop clinical
skills (e.g., empathetic listening, self-awareness, and personal communication) to overcome what
he called the “resentment and defensiveness” of consultees toward the change process. (Schein,
1991) encouraged consultants to treat consultees in a sensitive way and build relationships with
them based on trust and a safe psychological environment to overcome this resistance and
continue with the change process.

Understanding individuals’ psychological dispositions in change processes is, of course,

important (SHIMONI, 2017). These processes, in which individuals move from the known to the
unknown, often produce frustration and anxiety manifested in explicit aggression and resistance
(Coghlan, 1993; Schein, 1991). However, as the literature shows that an individual’s
psychological disposition as a starting point in understanding and coping with RTC is
problematic for at least three reasons (Bareil, 2013; Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2006; Jansen,
2000). First, approaching individuals who are the main producers of RTC as resisters implicitly
defines them as subjects who need remediation they are a problem that needs fixing (SHIMONI,
2017). These definitions, as advocates of appreciative inquiry claim, often tend to make
consultees suspicious of the change process and of consultants and therefore escalate their fear
and anxiety and generate even more resistance (Boyd & Bright , 2007). Second, as (Waddell &
Sohal, 1998), resistance plays a crucial role in drawing attention to aspects of change that may be
inappropriate, not well thought through, or perhaps plain wrong. By bypassing resistance,
scholars and practitioners fail to see alternative perspectives (SHIMONI, 2017). Scholars and
practitioners, therefore, should perceive resistance as feedback and as a source of energy for
organizations (Ford & Ford, 2009) and a “viable” part of the development of organizations (Nord
& Jermier, 1994). Third, the focus on individuals’ psychological dispositions in understanding
and coping with RTC often views individuals as the main source of within individuals, but this is
rare. More often, the obstacles lie in the organization’s structure, which forces people to choose
new perspectives at the expense of their own interests (Burnes, 2015; Dent & Goldberg, 1999).
For example, narrow job categories can seriously undermine efforts to increase productivity or
make it very difficult to consider customers, while performance-appraisal systems make people
choose between the new vision and their own self-interest (Kotter, 1995). Supporters of the
culture approach see inappropriate cultures and structures either as obstacles or as opportunities
for change processes and advise organizations to dismiss or replace employees who do not fit the
desired cultures or structures (Burnes, 2015; French & Bell, 1999; Peters & Waterman,
1982).This is the concept of organization culture as defined by (Schein, 1991), one of the
prominent leaders in the OD field. (Schein, 1991) saw an organization’s culture as a pattern of
common assumptions that have the potential to reduce resistance by showing the organization’s
members how to perceive, feel, and act so as to “maintain the social order.” In the same vein, in
researching the relationships among creativity, resistance to change, and social context in
organizations (Hon, Bloom, & Crant, 2014).

(Dent & Goldberg, , 1999) claimed that more and more researchers have begun seeing resistance as
a systems concept in which resistance comes not from the individual but from the context in
which the change occurs. (Burnes, 2015) According to the researchers, this happened when
psychological concepts focused mainly on an individual’s disposition replaced the former
systems concepts. according to (Dent & Goldberg, , 1999), searched not for individuals’
motivations and resistance but for the social conditions and forces that work for or against
change. For (Schein, 1991) Lewin theory, they reminded us, life in organizations, as in any other
social group, is primarily a system of roles, positions, behaviors, social norms, and other
structural elements. In this life, in Lewin’s words, “individual and group behavior is the product
of a complex system or field of forces that surround individuals and form a force field or life
space (Burnes, 2015). Following this direction, scholars and practitioners, according to (Burnes,
2015)), began to consider the role of structure and culture in processes of organizational change
and resistance, supporters of the structure approach, advocated putting workers into new
organizational contexts that “impose” on them new ideas, responsibilities, and relationships
rather than focusing on individual behavior (Schein, 1991). (Senge, 1990) claimed that resistance
to change occurs when the changers have not identified a balancing process so the change can be
effective. Based on wide empirical research, (Kotter J. P., 1995)showed that workers often
understand the direction of changes generated by firms’ leaders and they are interested in helping
to achieve those changes.

Resistance, is not a local reaction to specific change efforts but a social practice built into the
system, produced by social agents’ habitus, historically developed in dialectical relations
between social agents and social structures (SHIMONI, 2017). Second, in their heavy reliance on
subjectivity, social constructionists leave out Lewin’s materiality approach (Boje , DuRant,
Coppedge, Chambers, & Marcillo-Gomez, 2012).They adopt Lewin’s systemic and contextual
view but leave out (or see as marginal) his concern for materiality (Schein, 1991). Structures of
tasks, formalization procedures, and technical and bureaucratic control of work (e.g., allocation
of resources and systems of rewards) play a significant part in driving or restraining change
(Alvesson). Understanding resistance mainly as a result of change agents and change acceptors’
personal interaction,, ignores the role played by the organization’s material conditions (control
over resources, jobs definition, and position in the organization) in producing RTC (SHIMONI,
2017).

The two approaches discussed above (the traditional context and the social context), which
separately serve scholars and practitioners as legitimate theoretical and practical perspectives for
explaining the processes of RTC, view the personal and the social as relatively separated. Indeed,
most empirical studies of resistance have barely focused on the mutual role of context and
individuals in predicting employees’ behavior during organizational changes (Coghlan D. , 1993)
For the social construction approach, this separation, which views resistance as an either-or
situation, is problematic because it misses the opportunity to see the interplay between the two in
generating RTC (SHIMONI, 2017). Speaking to this issue, (Burnes, 2015)) noted that “the
individual and the systemic views of resistance need not be seen as inconceivable .
“Organizations, ”Burnes continued, “are social systems” and therefore we should see resistance
as emerging from the interplay between the “characteristics of the individual and the
characteristics of the organization” (Dent & Goldberg, 1999; Ford & Ford, 2009). By referring to
Kurt Lewin, (Oreg, 2006) claimed that in any human interaction, possible sources of resistance
are both within the individual and in the individual’s environment. However, (Oreg, 2006))
maintained that although all individuals are disposed to resist change, some are more disposed to
resist than (Burnes, 2015).That is, an individual’s dispositional resistance is always moderated
(e.g., constructed) by change agents’ management style and by the change acceptors’
involvement in the change process (Burnes, 2015). From a sociological perspective, (Waddell &
Sohal, 1998) concluded that rather than simply being driven by self-interest, employees’
resistance is a construction of a variety of social and management factors. In the same spirit,
(Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2006) claimed that change agents “contribute to the occurrence of
what they call resistant behavior , through their own actions and inactions, owing to their own
ignorance, incompetence, or mismanagement.”