Chapter 4: Reframing the Resistance–Commitment Paradigm

Management theorists continue to debate whether resistance to change (R2C) is undesirable, something managers need to overcome or reduce (Daft & Marcic, 2011; Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008), or desirable (Bareil, 2013; Brunnson, 1985), something managers need to invite or utilize. Passive resistance is a commonly recognized form of R2C (Coetsee, 1999; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002) with some organizational researchers describing it as a behavior somewhere between aggressive resistance and commitment (Coghlan, 1993; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Reger, Mullane, Gustafson, & DeMarie, 1994). Passive R2C is not to be confused with passive-aggressive behavior, which is viewed as a personality disorder by clinical psychologists (Aamodt, 2013; Long, Long, & Whitman, 2009; Penguin, 2009).