Organizational Behavior: Dealing with Resistance, Communication Barriers, and Power in the Workplace

Organization behavior 1
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Student Name
Name of the Course
Professor Name
Name of the School
City or State located
Date

Organization behavior 2
Organizational behavior
Question 1a
An open office layout is a type of office layout where employees work in an open setting
or side by side with other employees. In this type of office layout, employees are able to interact
and communicate without being blocked due to office partition. Additionally, an organization
using this type of office will be able to minimize its expenses when it comes to daily operations
by being able to share pieces of office equipment in the organization. In the case study,
Cheetham and Wynne is a fast-growing firm with the aim of changing the outlook of their office.
The senior partners sent a memo to other employees about changing the office layout to be open.
With this, the company was aiming at minimizing the cost involved in running the daily
operations of the company. Their efforts to change into an open layout was stopped by
employees resisting the change.
As an illustration, there are many reasons why employees were resisting this kind of
organizational change. First, there is shock and fear of the unknown. During the organizational
change, there are a group of employees who may want to cling to their past lives. They may also
resist changing their behaviors. They have the perception that, the less the organization knows
about their lives, the better. According to the case study, employees were claiming that they
won’t be able to talk to their boyfriends. The open office layout will be exposing the private lives
of employees. This was something that employees were not prepared to handle especially in a
multicultural working environment.
Secondly, employees felt that there is a loss of control of their working environment
(Duncan et al., 2013. P. 16). Being asked to change the way they operate makes them powerless

Organization behavior 3
hence making it hard to accept change. Some employees within an organization resist change
due to being weak to engage in a new routine. This shows a lack of competence which may
affect the overall performance of the organization (Khazanchi et al., 2018, p.17). Lastly, there is
the issue of office politics where there will be rumors going on within the organization. This is
evident in the case study because some employees were basing their ideas with unrealistic
information. In the case study, employees were discussing that a section of employees were
being treated better than others. These petty office politics makes it hard for change to take place.
Question 1b
The first step towards minimizing resistance from employees is the identification of the
cause of resistance. The major symptoms of organizational resistance can be observed. Some of
the symptoms include; the past performance of the organization with change, inadequate
awareness in the causes of organizational resistance, and inadequate support and commitment
from the top management among employees. When the causes have been identified, the
management should come up with strategies on how they can be reduced (Tharim, Samad and
Ismail, 2018, p. 17). From the case study, the senior partners of the law firm ought to have
conducted a meeting with other partners and employees to inform them of the reasons why the
office layout was being changed. Through this, employees would be able to mentally and
psychologically prepare to be working in an open office layout (Otterbring et al., 2018, p.333).
The next step will involve the use of resistance managers who will be able to take leadership
actions and handle the resistance. This may involve outsourcing managers or using available top
executives within the organization.