The Role of Conversations in Producing Intentional Change in Organizations

Dynamics of Resistance to Change: A Sequential Analysis of Change Agents in Action

“…Specifically, MI-inconsistent behaviour elicited sustain talk, but was also preceded by sustain talk. These results suggest that change agents tended to push through, rather than engaging change recipients in developing their own solutions (Ford & Ford, 1995).…”

“…Whereas this traditional person-centred approach demonizes resisting employees (Dent & Goldberg, 1999;Giangreco & Peccei, 2005;Kotter, 1995), more recent approaches propose that change agents themselves may contribute to the resistance they face . A key to understanding successful change agent -recipient relationships lies in understanding their conversational dynamics (Barrett et al, 1995;Ford & Ford, 1995). However, despite widely shared consensus that communication is the key to understanding successful change management (Doolin, Grant, & Thomas, 2013;Oswick, Grant, Marshak, & Cox, 2010), research has yet to address the communicative dynamics inherent in the change management process.…”

“…First, we introduce a dynamic conceptualization of resistance to change and explicate how resistance to change manifests in the language of change recipients (cf. Ford & Ford, 1995). Building on research in the area of motivational interviewing (MI, Miller & Rollnick, 2002), we pinpoint specific verbal behaviours by change agents that may elicit resistance to change.…”

The Effect of Internal Communication on Employees’ Commitment to Change in Malaysian Large Companies

“…In raising awareness among employees on the necessity of change and creating a sense of belonging for sustainable and cohesive attempts to change are the importance of communication itself (Sundstro & Annika, 2009 with commitment to change among employees in strengthen their sense effectively. Likewise, several previous studies have stressed on the importance of communication role in change processes (Ford & Ford, 1995;Kotter, 1996;Lewis & Seibold, 1996;van Vuuren & Elving, 2008). Even Lewis (1999) boldly stated that there is inseparably linked processes between communications and organizational change.…”

Introduction: Organizational Discourse: Exploring the Field

“…Moreover, the texts that constitute conversations are 'intertextual' (see discussion of contextsensitive approaches to discourse and intertextuality below). For example, Ford and Ford (1995) show how the forms of conversation associated with initiating organizational change are those that identify a need for change. From a discourse perspective, any such 'need for change', be it in the shape of an environmental shift, an organizational problem or a political agenda, is a discursive object that, once produced, is available for use by other interested actors that can support it with reference to broader discourses, such as 'strategic change' or 'profitability' (see Hardy et al, 2003).…”