Change Management Report: Resistance to Gender Equity Initiative

This report analyzes a change management initiative focused on gender equity within an organization, specifically addressing the resistance encountered from male leadership and management. The initiative, driven by the HRM department, aimed to increase female representation in leadership, management, and recruitment. The report explores the resistance stemming from factors such as the fear of losing control, preference for the status quo, and reluctance to abandon established habits. Male employees, fearing a loss of power and the disruption of their established routines, actively opposed the initiative. They stereotyped women as less productive, and were used to old habits. The report details how these fears manifested in organized opposition, including attempts to thwart the initiative and attempts to incite junior staff against the changes. The project team faced significant challenges in gaining support, ultimately leading to the initiative's halt and a commitment to broader stakeholder consultation. The report highlights the challenges of change management, the importance of understanding resistance, and the need for effective strategies to overcome it. It also touches upon the disappointment felt by female employees and their determination to pursue equity.

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MBA Change Management
Name
Institution

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MBA CHANGE MANAGEMENT
The change management reflected upon here follows the intervention by HRM in my
current organization based on gender equity in terms of selection, recruitment, promotion
management and leadership in the organization whereby more females are to be included in such
areas. The reflection will be directed towards three sources of resistance to this change including
reluctance to lose control, preference for low levels of stimulation and novelty, and reluctance to
give up old habits. The HRM received a lot of resistance coming mainly from the male
counterparts occupying the leadership and management position who saw the new initiative as a
threat to them losing control and giving up their old habits of leadership and management (Vuori,
2016).
I remember when the HRM started this initiative, the project team came up with a raft of
issues to promote many women into leadership and management positions and also to select and
recruit more women into senior and executive positions. For example, the male employees-both
in junior and senior positions immediately ganged up against the HR department and formed a
group to thwart any attempt to have more female counterparts included in the positions they were
presently holding. Their main contention was that they were used into old habits of stereotyping
women. They opposed this because they were stereotyping women as less productive and those
who belong to junior and casual works. Due to the fear of losing their control, they, therefore,
vowed at all cost to thwart this initiative.
The leadership and management positions are a preserve solely for old male who are used
to old ways of doing things. They opposed the initiative because they had overwhelming
preference for low levels of stimulation and novelty. They feared that young and innovative
women who were proposed to be promoted into management and leadership positions would be

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a real threat to them and will cause them to lose jobs. This is because these positions were held
by male counterparts who were only used to old style of management and they did not want to
give up their deeply rooted old habits of management and leadership. They feared that the
innovative women will bring in new ideas of management and leadership like collaborative and
shared leadership which will mean they will have more support from the junior. This, to them,
would mean them losing command and control and hence the explanation for the vehement
resistance to this change initiative.
Also, they feared that the women could be more productive because they would be doing
this to attract promotion. This was a threat to them because males had an automatic chance of
being promoted in the organization even without the need to work more productively. Thus they
argued that by having more women being selected and recruited, their junior and executive
positions will be under threat. This is because they would be forced to give up their old working
habits and also start working hard to be promoted. And because the male counterparts had never
been used to the promotion based on productivity and performance, this was a source of their
opposition and resistance as they were sure that this would compel them to change their usual
ancient habits.
The senior management group also feared they will lose control and this was the reason
they opposed the initiative. For example, currently, managers are more commandeering in the
organization and have amassed a lot of control. They use their positions as a means to get
supremacy titles in the organization. The junior workers fear them greatly and hence would
always do anything they say even it is against the objective, goals and strategies of the
organization. For this reasons, managers are feared in the organization and thus they want to
retain such controls. Thus, by having more innovative women taking up senior and executive

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positions, these male managers fear that their commands and control will be fast-eroding. Well
aware of this, the managers have vowed to resist any initiative focused at dethroning them from
their controls (Winiecki, 2013). Their opposition and resistance was a great threat to the success
of this change management initiative. I remember the project team having to hold frequent
meetings with the management trying to convince them to adopt it but each time they would
down their tools and resist.
In the same vein, the male counterparts in the leadership position opposed the initiative.
Their main threat was that innovative and young women have new ways of leading where the
input of everyone is taken into consideration as opposed to the old habits of the current crop of
male leaders in the organization. By this, the leaders are more than convinced that if this
initiative is allowed, they would lose their leadership positions and hence lose control
(Ceptureanu, 2015).
For this reason, they had no option but to gang up and join the managers to put any
obstacles that would hamper this initiative. Indeed, the male leaders even went out their ways to
incite the junior male counterparts to join them in resistance telling them that they will have less
opportunities to be promoted should they allow the initiative to go through. This created a
serious revolt in the organization that the project team became increasingly unable to even hold
meetings with the junior male employees to explain the need for the change and its potential
benefits not only to the organization but even the entire workforce.
Having been incited by the leadership, the junior male employees were convinced that
only female will be promoted due to affirmative action that the HRM had adapted. Because, they
preferred low levels of stimulation and novelty, they also vowed to resist the initiative. This was
because the junior male staff were also eyeing at the few promotion slots in the organization

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which then could have propelled them to either leadership or management position where they
could have control (Burnes, 2015). Thus they were convinced that their chance of promotion
would be unlikely if the initiative was to succeed. Thus they quickly joined the already evident
resisting leadership and management groups. This essence meant that the project team could not
function as intended.
Despite the project team explaining to them that the promotion would not be based on
either gender, but the productivity or performance of each employee, they did not want to hear
any of such arguments. To them, they had set their mind to oppose the change having been
negatively influenced by the fellow male leaders and managers merely to selfishly defend their
would-be promotions (Bareil, 2013). This was also compounded their reluctance to give up old
habits whereby they had always viewed women as people who should always work under the
supervision of men.
The HRM had no option but to halt the initiative as the prevailing environment was never
supported at all and vowed to engage in massive initial consultation with all the stakeholders
before bringing the issue up again in the future. However, the women who had been employed in
the organization felt much disappointed with their fellow male colleagues. They, however,
vowed to pursue equity using every means possible even if it meant going to court.

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References
Bareil, C. (2013). Two Paradigms about Resistance to Change. Organization Development
Journal, 31(3).
Burnes, B. (2015). Understanding resistance to change–building on Coch and French. Journal of
Change Management, 15(2), 92-116.
Ceptureanu, E. G. (2015). Survey Regarding Resistance To Change In Romanian Innovative
Smes From It Sector. Journal Of Applied Quantitative Methods, 10(1).
Vuori, T. (2016). Shaul Oreg and Jacob Goldenberg: Resistance to Innovation: Its Sources and
Manifestations.
Winiecki, J. (2013). Resistance to Change in the Soviet Economic System (Routledge Revivals):
A Property Rights Approach. Routledge.