Project Team Rewards
Literature Review
31
Table 11: Reasons for Change Resistance
Change threatens the status quo
Change increases fear of real or imagined consequences
Change may threaten the way of how people make sense of the
world
Change prompts people for self justification
Change brings people into a defence position
People may have resentments towards those leading the
change
People may have doubts about their ability to perform
Change threatens the actual security feeling
Change may impact the current social relations
Personal costs for change might be very high
Cannibalisation costs might be high
Interests between management (who want the change) and
employees might be different
Adopted from Ford et al. (2002) and Val & Fuentes (2003)
3.5.3. Rewarding in Change Management
Every project brings a certain level of change to at least some of its stakeholders
(Jaafari 2003). In contrast to the other project management literature, change management
literature does consider rewards, particularly in relation with change resistance.
Employee’s resistance towards change is “natural” and part of every change process
(Zaltman & Duncan 1977 in Bovey 2001:534).
Table 11: Reasons for Change Resistance
To overcome change resistance,
incentives are sometimes used (Singh &
Shoura 2006). One might argue that
overcoming change resistance with
incentives ignores the reasons (Kohn
1993a). Generally, this is true and most
authors agree that in change
management the most important things
are “feelings of inclusion and
empowerment, and providing clear
communication” (Michelman 2004:3).
Anyway, whatever a change manager
does, resistors always exist (Michelman
2004), and they might have good reasons (see Table 11). People affected by change often
ask, “What is in for me?” and as Table 11 shows,
it might be that there is not very much
(Michelman 2004:3). In those cases, when change brings real disadvantages, change
management authors recommend the use of incentives in order to reinforce the change
(e.g. Harvard 2003, Hiatt & Creasey 2003 and Singh & Shoura 2006).
The consideration of change brings a new aspect to rewarding employees that is usually
not covered by reward literature. On first glance, the level of change could appear as
another variable factor influencing the design of a reward system.
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