So the next screen slideshot, the question I'm going to address is, why are people normally resistant to changes within organizations? And this was brought up by Rodwick Camguna. And he says, I've witnessed coworkers, and management in different work settings opposed to change. And I started asking myself, why is it that people oppose changes? From my understanding some changes are good and very healthy to organizations. Just take the example of technological changes, product design changes, and so on. That's a great question and I think a variety of you guys responded and rated each other as having great responses. So I'll go through a few. And then again give my reflections on what's going on here. So Kathy Stevenson says one of the things that people are afraid of, or what they are resistant to change wise is fear, the fear of the unknown and she actually goes through a case of the care sector and it's very interesting. I mean it's kind of the things that are happening there, in terms of how people frame the change and how it's received is akin to what we'll talk about in the neo-institutional week of the course, week nine, where we talk about framing wars. And it's clear that people interpret things from their standpoints. And can take change from their vantage of their position. And so, I think there's something to that that the notion of change and the resistance to it is different, possibly by the position these individuals are in. Abe Tobala talks about fear too, but he sees it as kind of the outcome of uncertainty. I mean, change, you're shifting from something that's known, a set of structures in place and coordination rules, a set of participants, goals, an environment, and you're changing those things for the organization. And those pull people out of comfort zones, I mean it took them awhile, there's kind of sunk costs in learning those structures. And once you shift them out of it they have to re-learn and it's not clear whether these changes will mean the loss of a job, the loss of a participant. The change in the goals that they had aligned with as individuals they may have identified with the goal of the organization. It may be that the social structure requires them, coordinating in a way they're not comfortable with, or it's different from what they're used to, so on it goes. Or the environment means that they have to move, or that they have to consider a distinct environment, from which they had kind of organized everything around. Marco, [LAUGH] sorry Marjonovic writes that it's not only human nature, the notion for humans to be stressed out about change, and that we kind of relax in habitual kinds of settings of comfort, but it's also this increased bureaucratization. So, it's not just my comfort, my fear, personal individual things. It's also for the organization. That the system itself kind of has this coordination pattern, this reproduction that kind of occurs of that system. And once you start to change things it's possible they may not work, it's possible things may go entirely wrong. And actually in week 10 of this course when we talk about population ecology the argument of that theory will be that organizations don't change very well or very quickly at all. And when they do they die. And so one of the things that's interesting is that this resistance to change, or the stability of an organization, where it's being slow to change. Not being too fast at it may actually make it survive in the long term. That's usually true for, say, a generalist organization, albeit specialists may have to quickly adapt if the niche disappears. So that's something for week ten, but I think these things are all related. You're bringing up questions that span the course that we'll keep coming back to, so keep thinking about them. Also mentions this comfort zone individuals have, and so we have this again a kind of individual versus kind of the organizational kind of patterns of some costs, right, of coordination. And Scott Nurney brings up, that changes are, he thinks changes are resisted, because they're often forced top down. And this is actually a good point to make. Because here, unless you have buy-in to a lot of organizational reforms, unless it is something not just in the management, you will have this cascade of resistance, possibly. So the leadership will address new changes, and declare prior direction as of no value, too. And this can be frustrating to people who really invested in that prior direction. So Scott's notion here is pretty interesting in that if it was bottom up potentially, that if the change was something that the organization itself, the members of the organization, the participants within it kind of all the way down the hierarchy brought up to the top. That that might entail less resistance. Albeit, maybe the resistance is from the top down in those cases, so you may hae the opposite kind of situation, at least from the opposite direction. So I also think there is a key thing going on here in terms of what is being changed can instill different notions of resistance, changing someones culture or the deep social structure of informal relationships can be quite disconcerting. because it's a pattern of communication that's the daily kinds of forms of association as well as the kind of daily values that are being imbued and practices and rituals that people have. Altering those have real kind of everyday consequences for people. The technology too. If a task that you use to take an input and make it an output, if you alter those, it's feasible that that may be less of a problem if you have a product that you have to come up with a new product that may not be so terrible in some cases. The environment, actually moving a company or rotating participants, those can be quite disconcerting too. That that firing a bunch of people, or buying out something, and taking it over, those can have kinds of resistant kind of effects. Usually when you merge with another company, the company that remains, there may be some resistance and the like. So, these are common dynamics. And I do think that you guys pick up on a lot of the notions that we are kind of comfortable with stability and reproduction in our situation. And yet we also do see some degree of change. It is just not dramatic change and stressful change. So I think there a degree issue there too, the amount of change that is implemented that may be too much for people. There is some discussion in some research in psychology about flow and optimal experience that a little bit of challenge is good. Too much challenge or too much change may be too far for people to reach and come along with you. So, there's a lot of things going on here and the notion of change and resistance to it has many layers. And I'm glad we've started the conversation on it, and maybe we can keep bringing it up during the course of the ten week course, okay? Thanks.
