Managing Employee’s Resistance to Change: A Conceptual Model Based on Human Capital Perspective

Intellectual capital seems a matter of focus for the global economic environment, by being the most important part of company’s value. Change’s consequences forced the organizations to adapt. The latest financial crisis has faced change’s urgency and reality. Resistance to change should be understood as a normal reaction, because change determines employees to feel insecure. This insecurity directly affects the most important component of company’s IC: Human Capital. The aim of this paper is to investigate the problem of employees’ resistance to change and to explore different ways of acting. The research objectives are: to find out leaders and employees’ perception about change; to determine, through a literature review, the impact of change on the organizations’ members and to build a conceptual model for an effective management of employees’ resistance to change. The benefits of our study consist in offering an organizational leadership and change management frameworks, in identifying the relevant characteristics and behaviors for a leader under change’s circumstances, in showing change’s challenges influencing different attitudes of employees up to the change resistance one. Our research result is the elaboration of a conceptual model that is thought to be further tested and validated through a series of empirical researches.