A study on resistance to change in organizations and change management: A comparison of Libya and Turkey

The change is an important factor in our lives, people cannot live without change, especially with the rapid development of technology and means of living. As we know, organization is an open system affecting and influencing by the environment. In addition, because of the tremendous development and strong competition among organizations in the business environment, change has become inevitable for the organizations. Therefore, organizations need to undergo changes constantly if they want to be competitive. However, there is always resistance to change by employees within organization. Hence, managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations, in a way that reduces employee resistance to change by studying administrative methods that can be used to overcome the change resistance. This study included administrative and academic managers from two universities selected from Libya and Turkish universities. In this study, it has been examined as a comparison of the methods that are effective in managing change by revealing the employees' perceptions of resistance to change. A stratified purposive sample consists of 140 managers was selected from a population of 154 managers, managers of the University of Tobruk in Libya. Also in the same method, 108 managers were selected from a population of 120 managers, managers of the University of Kastamonu in Turkey. The research instrument was used to discover the causes of employees' resistance to change and administrative methods to overcome such resistance to change, as the survey responses were measured using a five point Likert scale. Are liability and validity of the study questionnaire has been standardized for Libya and Turkey conditions. Permission to conduct research at the selected universities was obtained from the deans of universities in Libya and Turkey. Informed consent was obtained from the different respondents and anonymity of respondents was secured. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 21 which is widely used in social research, Tests of reliability and validity, Pearson correlation analysis, and Regression Analysis, were carried out for analyzing the collected data. The study found a set of results. The study revealed that the most important cause of employees' resistance change in Libya is lack of planning for change, and the most important cause of employees' resistance change in Turkey is poor communication between management and employees. With regard to the administrative methods to overcome the resistance to change, the findings about Libya showed that the readiness to change is the very important method, as the same finding was found in Turkey. Moreover, the study confirms that there are statistical differences in the causes of changes and the administrative methods with regard to Libya and Turkey. The study also presented a set of recommendations for practice and recommendations for future research.