change resistance

• Change Resistance

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Sustainability and systemic change resistance

1 Change resistance is also known as organizational resistance, barriers to

change, or policy resistance.John Sterman, Business Dynamics:

Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, 2000, pp 5-10.


Sustainability and systemic change resistance - Overview of resistance to solving the sustainability problem

1 Change resistance runs so high that the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters, China and the United States, have never

adopted the Kyoto Protocol treaty. In the US resistance was so strong that in 1999 the US Senate voted 95 to zero against the treaty by passing the Byrd–Hagel Resolution, despite the fact Al Gore was vice-president at the

time. Not a single senator could be persuaded to support the treaty, which has not been

brought back to the floor since. https://store.theartofservice.com/the-change-resistance-toolkit.html


1 Due to prolonged change resistance, the climate change problem has escalated to the climate change

crisis



1 These events suggest that change resistance to solving the

sustainability problem is so high the problem is currently unsolvable.


Sustainability and systemic change resistance - The change resistance and proper coupling subproblems

1 Understanding change resistance requires seeing it as a distinct and separate part of the sustainability

problem



1 Jack Harich's 2010 paper on Change Resistance as the Crux of the Environmental Sustainability Problem argues there are two

separate problems to solve.Jack Harich, [http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/009/C

hangeResistanceAsCrux.htm “Change Resistance as the Crux of the Environmental Sustainability Problem”], System Dynamics Review, January 2010. A root cause analysis and a system dynamics model were used to

explain how: https://store.theartofservice.com/the-change-resistance-toolkit.html


1 :...difficult social problems [like sustainability must be decomposed] into two sequential subproblems: (1) How to overcome change resistance and then (2) How to achieve proper

coupling



1 : Change resistance is the tendency for a system to continue its current behavior, despite the application of

force to change that behavior.



1 Therefore systemic change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first.



1 Change resistance is also called barriers to change. Hoffman and Bazerman, in a chapter on

“Understanding and overcoming the organizational and psychological barriers to

action,” concluded that:Organizations and the Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term

Ecological and Societal Solutions, Sharma, S. et al., (Ed), 2007. Chapter 4, Hoffman, A. J., and

Bazerman, M. H., Changing practice on sustainability: Understanding and overcoming the

organizational and psychological barriers to action, p85.



1 This may be expressed as an emerging principle: systemic change

resistance is the crux of the sustainability problem and must be

solved first, before the human system can be properly coupled to

the greater system it lives within, the environment.


Sustainability and systemic change resistance - Systemic versus individual change resistance

1 “Systemic means originating from the system in such a manner as to affect the behavior of most or all social agents of certain types, as

opposed to originating from individual agents.” Individual change resistance originates from individual

people and organizations



1 If sources of systemic change resistance are present, they are the principal cause of

individual change resistance. According to the fundamental attribution error it is crucial to address systemic change resistance when present and avoid assuming that change

resistance can be overcome by bargaining, reasoning, inspirational appeals, and so on.

This is because:John Sterman, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for

a Complex World, 2000, p28.https://store.theartofservice.com/the-change-resistance-toolkit.html


1 Peter Senge, a thought leader of systems thinking for the business

world, describes the structural source of systemic change resistance as being due to an “implicit system

goal:” Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 1990, p88.



1 Senge’s insight applies to the sustainability problem. Until the “implicit system goal” causing

systemic change resistance is found and resolved, change efforts to solve

the proper coupling part of the sustainability problem may be, as

Senge argues, “doomed to failure.”


Sustainability and systemic change resistance - The current focus is on proper coupling

1 The four solutions Gore mentions are proper coupling practices. There is,

however, a hint of acknowledgement that overcoming systemic change

resistance is the real challenge, when Gore says “...we just have to have

the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything

but political will.” https://store.theartofservice.com/the-change-resistance-toolkit.html


1 Some solutions are attempts to overcome individual change resistance, such as:



1 However none of the twenty-seven solutions deal with overcoming systemic change

resistance.


Sustainability and systemic change resistance - Overcoming systemic change resistance

1 Efforts here are sparse because environmentalism is currently not oriented toward treating systemic

change resistance as a distinct and separate problem to solve.



1 On how to specifically overcome the change resistance subproblem, Markvart examined two leading

theories that seemed to offer insight into change resistance, Panarchy

theory and New institutionalism|New Institutionalism, and concluded that:



1 Taking a root cause analysis and system dynamics modeling

approach, Harich carefully defined the three characteristics of a root

cause and then found a main systemic root cause for both the

change resistance and proper coupling subproblems



1 Here Meadows refers to the leverage point for resolving the proper

coupling subproblem rather than the leverage point for overcoming

change resistance. This is because the current focus of

environmentalism is on proper coupling.



1 However, if the leverage points associated with the root causes of change resistance exist and can be

found, the system will not resist changing them. This is an important principle of social system behavior.



1 For example, Harich found the main root cause of successful systemic

change resistance to be high deception effectiveness



1 Promotion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been used to try to overcome change resistance to

solving social problems, including environmental sustainability


Sustainability and environmental management - Resistance to change

1 Change resistance is also known as organizational resistance, barriers to

change, or policy resistance.John Sterman, Business Dynamics:

Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, 2000, pp 5-10.


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