Antecedents of resistance to change: The role of ethical leadership and internal communication

Resistance to change is a barrier for organizations that need to evolve. Understanding how factors like internal communication and ethical leadership influence employees’ resistance is crucial for organization that are going through change. During this work, the impact of internal communication and ethical leadership on resistance to change is explored, aiming to identify which variables help to reduce employees’ resistance to change during moments of transition. To develop the study, a questionnaire was sent to different people that work in the Portuguese organizational context. Significant differences were found within the sample for resistance to change. Participants who work in the public sector of activity are less resistant to change than the ones who work for the private sector. Significant differences were also found for organizational integration and personal feedback, where individuals who have worked on the company for 11 to 15 years are the most satisfied with these dimensions of communication. This study examined how the different dimensions of ethical leadership and internal communication predict resistance to change through stepwise regression analysis. The results indicate that one of the dimensions of ethical leadership (despotic leadership) as well as one of the dimensions of internal communication (informal communication) are relevant predictors and explain 8,5% of the variance.