From Resistance to Resilience

Two themes in the organizational change literature for decades have been of recurring interest to organizational scholars and practitioners and are central to Theodore Zorn’s and Jennifer Scott’s chapter-‘Why Change? The Dark Side of Change and Change Resistance’. The first theme centers on the idea that most change programs fail-they don’t produce change as intended. The second theme centers on the idea that most change programs are resisted. This essay seeks to add additional nuance to the analysis by emphasizing the contingent nature of change failures and resistance. That is, change and resistance are neither good nor bad in an absolute sense. Appraisals of change failure and resistance depend: they depend on the element of change that is being assessed; the point in time that assessment is being made, and whose perspective on change is being privileged. These considerations open our eyes to the possibility that resilience underlies resistance.