Emotions, subjectivity, and supposed resistances to organizational change

Abstract

Many of the texts in change management literature approach the theme almost exclusively in a planning perspective, trying to find answers on issues as: how to make an organization being successful in its strategy for intentional change, promoting a cohesion of efforts and eliminating the supposed human resistances? Little attention has been dedicated, however, to individuals’ emotions, to the sense they attribute toorganizational change, and to their chances to become subjects in such context. This research, accomplished in five organizations in Rio deJaneiro, has the objective of trying to fill this kind of lack, by means of 75 interviews with employees that have participated in great changes facedby those organizations. The results point to the fragility of some of the myths about the concept of resistance, and suggest the possibility to turnorganizational change less traumatic for individuals, by means of the opportunities they find to constitute themselves as subjects and to makesense of their performance in the new context.