Overcoming Structural Resistance in SPI with Change Management

Abstract

SPI initiatives can be seen as change programmes. Previous work has identified that such programmes are subject to resistance. A key challenge in the area is to understand the political issues in SPI change. However, at present there is little existing work in SPI related to the politics of improving. By adopting a view of politics as central to contemporary organizations, this paper reviews how we might understand resistance, how and why resistance occurs, and the implications of resistance for SPI. We provide a more detailed understanding of change management models (Katter's 8 steps and Prosci's Change Management Model) and their use in addressing resistance in SPI. It is argued that change management models can be used to accommodate the human factor of change in SPI. The paper explains the activities that help the successes of SPI initiatives and their relationship with the change management models. This paper contributes a structured change management approach to address resistance. We show from our experience how these approaches have been applied.