Resistant, Ready or Engaged – with What Change? A Review and Transformative Research Agenda

Over the past twenty-five years the Journal of Change Management (JCM) has been an important platform for advancing our understanding of how employees orient themselves toward organizational change. In this paper, we provide a critical overview of studies published in the JCM addressing readiness for change, resistance to change and employees’ engagement over the past 25 years. Our synthesis reveals that readiness, resistance, and engagement are relational, dynamic, and contextually embedded processes. Rather than viewing readiness, resistance, and engagement as separate or opposing states, the journal’s contributions highlight their interrelatedness as regards how employees make sense of, negotiate, and act upon change initiatives. After critically assessing these concepts from the perspectives of agency and change, we conclude by outlining a transformative future research agenda that revolves around the question of what kinds of changes the individual/manager of the twenty-first century needs to be ready for, resist and/or engage in. In sum, there is a need to reconsider our agency and relationship to change.MAD statementThis paper makes a difference by synthesizing 25 years of research from the Journal of Change Management to demonstrate that readiness, resistance, and engagement are not static states, but rather dynamic, relational and contextually embedded processes. By reframing these concepts through the lenses of agency and change, we challenge binaries and show how employees actively negotiate change. The paper sets out a research agenda to help researchers and practitioners in today’s turbulent organizational and societal landscapes, where it is more critical than ever to discern what changes to resist, be ready for and engage with.