Assessing the Causes of Employee Resistance to Change in the Implementation of Business Processes Re-engineering in an Organization

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Engineering - General, Basics, grade: MERIT, Ghana Telecom University College (GRADUATE SCHOOL), course: Engineering Project management, language: English, abstract: The dynamism, especially in the Ghanaian market has forced players at all levels to consider competitive strategies such as business process re-engineering to rightly position them in the market. Also, the intense world-wide competition in today's service industry motivates many companies to reengineer their old fashioned processes to achieve new heights of success. The study is therefore undertaken to investigate what could be the root cause employee resistance to change when deploying strategies such as Business process reengineering in Opportunity International Savings and Loans Ltd. The study was designed as a quantitative survey, with questionnaires as the means of data gathering. Using the simple random sampling method, the study selected 300 respondents from OISL, out of a population of 750. The simple random sampling method was used to avoid bias in the sampling and ultimately, the results. The study used the SPSS and Microsoft Excel to analyse the data. From the analyses of data, the study concluded that the principal causes of employee resistance were inadequate training, the perception that the change process is an imposition and the changes being inconvenient the daily routine of employees. In addition technical hitches and wrong timing leads to resistance to change. Using the ADKAR model, the study also concluded that employee involvement, communication and training are clearly the weaknesses of the change management methodology of the case study organization. The study also concluded that necessary support OISL management provide for employees during the implementation of business process re-engineering were far lower than the expectations of employees. The study therefore recommended that adequate training and development, democratization of the change process, better communication strategy to overcome resistance to change. ?