Resistance in Organisations: Insights for Managers - BE434 Management Psychology

Guidance for coursework 2 BE434 Management psychology

Proposed Coursework question (2) for this year – 2019/2020

Critically discuss the following statement: resistance in organisations provides useful insights for managers. In your essay, draw on concepts and readings from this module. 2800 word essay (absolute maximum 2800 words excluding references), 50% of module mark

Guidance for coursework 2 BE434 Management psychology

In this coursework essay, you are asked to consider the statement that “resistance in organisations provides useful insights for managers.” You are also asked to draw on concepts and readings from this module. In this guidance document, I will outline some of the main resources and elements I would expect to find in your coursework essay. Do not feel that you have to follow this guidance to the letter, but if you are unsure about how to approach the essay it might provide you with a useful core structure and a set of steps to take.

Main resources

Readings directly on resistance in organisations

• Folder on Moodle with articles on resistance

• Fleming and Spicer article

• Noon and Blyton book chapter (in the library) Other course readings that shed light on wider management aspects and managerial assumptions on the individual:

• Illouz chapter, Grey article, Parket Follett chapter, Rose chapters

A brief note about resistance

Please note that resistance to control in organisation is NOT the same as resistance to change in organisations. While there are links between these phenomena, they are concepts developed for different purposes and using them interchangeably can be confusing. In this module, we have looked mainly at resistance to managerial control so this would make most sense for this essay.

Proposed outline for the essay

In the introduction, you should present your guiding question for the essay, and why you think it is important. You can make the point here that how we deal with resistance in organisations is dependent on our perspective. You could convey how management theory and practice contain elements of behaviourism and humanism, as has been covered extensively in this module.

2. Key concepts

In this section you may want to define and discuss

• Organizational control.

Edwards’ (1979) four types of control (direct, technical, bureaucratic and normative) can be a useful typology (please find the reference below). This typology is also discussed in many articles, and it may be easier to access and understand this way. You can also draw on independently searched resources on organisational control, as well as the Illouz and Grey articles here.

• Resistance in organisations.

Here the articles in the file on Moodle will be a big help, as well as the readings for the resistance lecture. The lecture on resistance discusses a variety of different practices of resistance, and highlights that they can be covert or overt, and formal or informal.

• Perspectives on control

These were covered in the resistance lecture and are discussed in greater detail in the Noon and Blyton chapter. The key is to convey that how management understand resistance (by means of our psychological assumptions and our view of organizations/society) has major implications for how they respond to it.

3. Analysis and discussion

This is where you can develop your argument on whether you see resistance as productive/meaningful or primarily as disruptive. You will have to show your argumentation Your argument depends on your own assumptions on the individual and on organisations, and you should reflect on these and convey this in the text. You can also draw on case study material in this section, and draw on the work of independently researched academic sources that discuss resistance in organisations.