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Influence Costs, Structural Inertia, and Organizational Change
Author(s) -
Schaefer Scott
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of economics and management strategy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.672
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1530-9134
pISSN - 1058-6407
DOI - 10.1111/j.1430-9134.1998.00237.x
Subject(s) - organizational change , resistance (ecology) , technological change , affect (linguistics) , inertia , business , industrial organization , change management (itsm) , microeconomics , marketing , economics , public relations , psychology , political science , ecology , physics , macroeconomics , communication , classical mechanics , lean manufacturing , biology
This paper builds an economic model of the relationship between influence activity and resistance to change in organizations. I show that influence activity can create harmful barriers to change and that the influence costs of change are positively related to the firm's prospects. The model rationalizes the widely held view that firms often must endure a survival‐threatening crisis before meaningful change can be achieved. I show that employees' choices of whether to engage in influence activity can depend on their beliefs as to whether the firm will choose to change its organizational form. If employees expect change, their best response is to try to affect the form of the change in their favor.