OB Research Seminar - Alonso de Orleans, HEC Lausanne

A major topic in the change management literature is that of resistance to change, which is largely believed to be a crucial factor for the success of an intended change, and, conversely, a major culprit for failure in change initiatives; If change recipients don’t adapt their behaviour to follow the proposed change, then such a change will not succeed in the organisation. Much of the literature has focused on individual characteristics to predict organizational change failures, rather than looking at potential environmental factors.

This paper evaluates one of the most frequently used scales in change management, Oreg’sdispositional resistance to change scale. This scale measures dispositional resistance to change, that is, the individuals’ inherent disposition to resist change, thereby, however, largely ignoring environmental factors.

This review will evaluate the way the scale was constructed, both methodologically and conceptually, it will review the existing literature that cited Oreg’s original article, how the former has used the scale or its concepts, and finally I will emit recommendations as to how dispositional resistance to change could be better researched and how a scale of this nature could be constructed in the future.