In this essay, we will explore a question which is widely recognized in the world of practitioners of change and which seems a problematic issue in any change process, but is badly understood in theory: “What is happening when there is a lot of enthusiasm about a change initiative and a lot of knowledge about the change, but nothing happens?” Why is coming into action so difficult in any change process? We ourselves, being scholars as well as practitioners, are in the middle of trying to understand the answers to these questions. In this essay, we will explore the literature to shed light on this. We discuss that (a) “people consistently act inconsistently,” (b) resistance is a multi-layered and multi-meaning concept that needs reconceptualization, and (c) perception of the change recipient plays a pivotal role in every change process.
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