Works
- Choosing Strategies for Change, Harvard Business Review, 1979
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Six approaches to resistance. Kotter and Schlesinger list six ways to deal with resistance to change: education and communication, participation and involvement, facilitation and support, negotiation and agreement, manipulation and co-optation, and explicit and implicit coercion. Each suits different situations and carries costs; negotiation offers incentives to active or potential resisters, and coercion is fast and suited to change agents with power, at the price of resentment.
What it explains
Kotter and Schlesinger explain that handling resistance is a choice among methods with different speeds and costs, from involving resisters to compensating them to deciding over their objections. The article, written for managers in Harvard Business Review, treats each method as legitimate in the right situation.