Handling Resistance to Change When Societal and Workplace Logics Conflict

Namrata Malhotra,Charlene Zietsma,Michael Smets,Timothy Morris

doi:10.1177/0001839220962760

Namrata Malhotra, Charlene Zietsma + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839220962760

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Abstract

Changes in societal logics often leave firms’ policies and practices out of step. Yet when firms introduce a change that brings in a new societal logic, employees may resist, even though they personally value the change, because the incoming logic conflicts with existing organizational logics. How can change agents handle logic-based resistance to an organizational initiative that introduces a new logic? We studied elite law firms that introduced a new role into their traditional up-or-out career path in response to associates’ anonymously expressed desire for better work–life balance, which associates resisted because expressing family concerns was illegitimate within the firms. Change agents responded to three forms of resisters’ logic-based concerns—irreconcilability, ambiguity, and contradiction—with three tailored responses—redirecting, reinforcing, and reassuring—using contextually legitimate logic elements. Over time logic elements of each concern–response pair harmonized to enable individuals to enact their logics seamlessly and organizations to update the existing logic settlement to assimilate the societal change. We demonstrate that the way available logics are accessed and activated between pluralistic change agents and resisters can enable logic settlements to be updated in response to societal change. We draw insights about how logics do or do not constrain agency.

Highlights

Introduction of ChangeActivated logic elements SituationalChronic cues accessibility Available logics ResistersConcerns: Irreconcilability Concerns Ambiguity Concerns Contradiction ConcernsRedirecting Responses: Reinforcing ReassuringHarmonizing: Enacting &Elaborating the ChangeUpdated Logic Settlement
We addressed our research question—how do change agents handle logicbased resistance to an organizational initiative that introduces a new logic?—by studying a change that was introduced in five elite UK law firms (F1–F5)
Our sample comprised the ‘‘lead sheep.’’ We focused inside each organization to study the fallout of the change initiative it introduced to adapt to a societal change and the field-level discourse it sparked about work–life balance

Summary

METHODS

We study a revelatory case (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007): the introduction of the ‘‘counsel’’ role, changing the highly institutionalized career structure in elite UK law firms, from 2006 to 2018. Between giving our stars the responsibility and experience at a junior level or allowing more senior lawyers to be in the role of counsel and doing the jobs that they could otherwise be doing, which creates a logjam.’’ While the partners spoke of supporting associates’ career strategy, they referred to firm strategy to ‘‘grow the business’’ (P1, F4) or become ‘‘30 percent bigger’’ (P1, F1) and recognized the benefits a variety of people with ‘‘different titles’’ could bring to ‘‘churn things when work comes in.’’ Even though they alluded to growing the business as a rationale for counsel, they tended to privilege opportunities the firm’s growth created for the rising stars’ development: ‘‘So if you had three or four fantastically able senior associates . The family logic was gradually becoming an active member of the existing logic settlement

DISCUSSION

Introduction of Change

Findings

Limitations and Boundary