Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
3-2024
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6677-6844
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Katherine Yeager
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Sara Salkil
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Heather Rasmussen
Abstract
Change is never ending in organizations, as it is necessary to maintain a competitive advantage. Although change is needed, research shows most change implementations do not succeed.
Middle managers (MMs) are considered the main facilitators of change. They receive directive for change and are tasked with not only processing and accepting the change but also communicating the directive down into the ranks and executing upon it. This basic qualitative study explored how resilience can aid an MM when implementing change, where resistance is present. The conceptual framework for this study included Lewin’s (1947) three-stage model of change theory and the resilience theory. The participants interviewed were 10 individuals who had experienced resistance as a middle manager because of a change directive. Each individual described their experiences and were asked prompts from a semistructured interview protocol document when specifics were not covered freely. Transcripts of these interviews were used for a basis of data that were coded to identify themes that impacted the MM’s resilience negatively or positively and created the discussion and recommendations for the findings. The overall finding of this research proved that positive leadership had the main effect on resilience during times of change resistance for MMs.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hall, April D., "The Impact of Resilience on a Middle Manager’s Resistance to Organizational Change" (2024). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 752.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/752