Challenges in Change Management: Lack of Consensus, Employee Resistance, and Rapid Change in Business Scenario

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change management
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Introduction
The importance for change management is increasing with time due to the reason that it
is becoming more important for the business organizations to cope up with the change in the
external business environment. However, with the increase in importance for change, challenges
are also increasing in the implementation process (Nesterkin 2013). The challenges are becoming
more diverse and varied with time and it is of immediate need that the entire major challenges to
be identified. In this essay, the major challenges that are becoming common in the
implementation process of change management will be discussed. Different authors are having
different approaches in view to these identified challenges. This essay will critically review all
the challenges and will also critique the literature to be used.
Lack of consensus
The major challenge that is becoming more relevant in the current time is lack of
consensus among the involved stakeholders. According to Shaw, Drucker and Senge (2013), in a
particular change process, number of stakeholders are being involved and there is a need to built
consensus among them in order to create the vision. However, interest of the stakeholders will be
different and initiating a certain approach of change management will cause conflict among
them. As per the authors, if the managers are intuiting the change in reducing the cost and thus
reducing the workforce, then it will clash with the interest of the employees due to the reason
that their job security will be in risk. In the current time, the major conflict originates in
accepting new technologies in the process. The authors have stated that upper level management
will have more interest in accepting new technologies in place but the employees may perceive
that technology will reduce their importance and thus consensus cannot get created. Therefore, if

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the consensus cannot get created then the change management process will have no particular
approach or vision. This will affect the entre process (Huang et al. 2013).
Based on the above discussion, Nielsen and Nielsen (2013) thrown the light on the
diversity in the workforce of the contemporary business organizations. According to them,
majority of the organizations in the current time are having diverse workforce and employees
from different cultures are having different set of objectives and interest. Hence, building
consensus is more difficult in a diverse workforce. As per the authors, the objective of the
change management may be accepted by the employees from a certain cultural group but not get
accepted by others. Managers and change agents will face the challenge of creating the
consensus among the employees from different cultures (Martin Alcazar, Miguel Romero
Fernandez and Sanchez Gardey 2013).
Employee resistance
Resistance from the side of the employees can get emerged due to different reasons and it
is one of the most common challenges for the managers in the change process. As per Bateh,
Castaneda and Farah (2013), in majority of the cases, employees resist to the organizational
change only their interests are not being fulfilled or they perceive negative impacts. However, on
the other hand, it is also being stated by the authors that resistances from the employees may
have valid reasons or not. This is due to the fact that in different cases, employees are giving
wrong perception about the change process and thus they resist. The authors have given the
example of technological change in the organization. According to them, technological change is
being initiated in the organization either to replace the manual effort or to enhance the efficiency
of the employees. Hence, if the technological change is initiated for the enhancing the