Abstract:

Change has become the cosmic leitmotif in the modern business environment. This panoply of change is expressed in the frequent mergers, acquisitions, new technologies, restructuring, downsizing and a mercurial regulatory environment which all forge an unnerving climate of uncertainty. Organisations, particularly, work organisations are pressured to respond willy-nilly as change superciliously sweeps across the workplace. Many organisations are vulnerable to the situation because of the instability, conflict and frequency of change programmes that arise. Industrial organisations in developing countries are not immune from the existing pressure cooker that the business environment has become. It is either they conform or they continue to play a marginal role in global commerce. In this paper, effort has been expended to examine the concepts of organisational change and change management. The paper also identified sources of resistance to change and strategies for managing resistance to change with focus on the lessons these portend for industrial organisations in developing countries. For those organisations who manage change skilfully, it could become the force to perpetuate success and accomplishment for them, their workers and the local economy.