Employees' resistance to organizational change in the case of automation

Abstract

Purpose -- the purpose of this thesis is to investigate employees' resistance to change in the specific case of system automation. The research attempts to deduct the managerial practices that can be implemented to overcome such resistance. Design/methodology/approach -- for data collection purposes, a quantitative questionnaire was distributed among randomly selected participants who have been through a change in software/systems during their employment period. The study's epistemology is positivism, the ontology is objectivism and the research approach is deductive. Findings -- the result of this research showed that five factors mostly affect employees' resistance to change which are: 1) the role of management in overcoming resistance to change, 2) the need for change and employees' engagement, 3) the system's impact on duties, motivation and work environment, 4) the system's provider and implementation process and5) stress and expectations. Research limitations/implications -- the research limitation was the number of respondents which might have been more representative if it was higher, however, only large-sized companies are those who invest in implementing systems, thus accessing them was not possible due to internal restrictions and high level of bureaucracy. Practical implications -- strategists and managers who are planning to implement a change in their software must not only take into consideration the financial, technical and operational impact of such a change, but also look into the human resources aspect of it. Anticipating the employees' resisting factors may help organizations save time and money through the implementation process by setting the convenient strategies. Originality/value -- despite the revolution in the field of process automation and applications, few authors raised the topic of employees' resistance of that specific change within an organization.