**1. Introduction**

An important part of organizational life is change. Without change, no business can survive in today's competitive environment. Modern managers are faced with permanent progressive technological change. The most important tasks are to initiate organizational change and to ensure that a new position is achieved by keeping it under control among existing business

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

structures. If they do not discuss the new methods, equipment and management policies, they can face with very serious moral and manufacturing problems [1].

change as an opportunity to overcome problems and improve their careers in a positive sense, middle-level managers do not welcome well the change very much. Change is destructive and unexpected for them, and this can disrupt the balances [7]. Resistance resulting against change can be assessable as a destructive force working in the interests of competing firms [8]. Kotter and Schlesinger stated that managers should be aware of four common situations in which people are motivated to show resistance to change. These are [9]: narrow interest, misunderstanding and lack of trust, different evaluations and low tolerance for change.

Resistance to Change and Conflict of Interest: A Case Study

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Caruth et al. [1] suggested that people with varying degrees of resistance would show it in three different ways. These are carried out directly as attacks, secret attacks and passive behaviors [1]. Resistance to change can be realized individually or organizationally. The signs of individual resistance are usually complaints, mistakes, anger, indifference, withdrawal, absenteeism to work due to health reasons and stubbornness. As for that, organizational resistance is work accidents, increase in compensation claims of employees, increasing absenteeism, sabotage, increase in expenditures due to health and decreasing productivity, and these

Koçel lists the events that cause people to show resistance to change in reasons regarding to

While resistance to change is performed individually or in groups, it can also appear in open or hidden forms. What is important here is the fact that there are individuals at the beginning of resistance. Even the emerging resistance in groups is realized as formal or informal struc-

When the causes of change resistance, which are revealed by various researchers and partly seen as a repetition of each other, are considered together, the factors that constitute resistance to change are mainly expressed under six headings. They are personality traits of individuals, which are emerging as uncertainties about whether they will bring change or take it, insecurity against oneself or those who perform change, an interest appraisal resulting from the changes that will take place between the current situation and the future situation, commit-

Individual differences, known as personality, are defined as how individuals think and behave in different situations [11]. Personality traits usually tend to be based on the emergence of personal hostilities, being disturbed on being guided, seeing as being excluded and on the edge of being thrown away with change, characteristic stupor, anger, personal conflicts, ignorance, lack of interest and the emergence of personal hostilities against those who make the change.

One of the most important elements in the individual dynamics of changing resistance is uncertainty. People are afraid of unknowns and uncertainties [12]. The fact that those who

the business, due to personal reasons and for social reasons [6].

are only some common signs [10].

**2.1. Function of resistance to change**

tures strengthened by the gathering of individuals.

ment to past experiences and group-effect result.

*2.1.1. Personality*

*2.1.2. Uncertainty*

The globalization of the markets in the 1980s and 1990s witnessed an unprecedented period of change, thanks to increased external competition and rapid technological movements. Strategic initiatives, mergers, acquisitions and operational initiatives have gained momentum in this process; applications such as just-in-time production, total quality management, process innovation and MRP have contributed to the change process. New requests coming to organizations in the control of these processes, the efforts to bring the performances of the organizations to the upper levels and new designs have provided the development of change management [2].

Organizational change efforts are often met with strength by people. Although managers are aware of this resistance, they do not make too much effort to understand why and how they will be handled. One of the most important problems encountered in making changes in organizations is to manage resistance to change and handle it correctly. Resistance to change emerges in different and unexpected ways [3]. Resistance to change is like a pain. It does not say exactly where the error is, but it allows you to understand that it is a problem [4]. However, the resistance to change must be perceived as reasonable. This is natural, and a change that is essentially not encountered with resistance should not be considered as natural [5].

Similarly, conflicts are considered to be inherent in organizations. The important thing is to prevent conflicts from taking over organizational interests. If conflicts arise in situations where personal interests constitute a source, it is an issue that needs to be discussed seriously.

This study includes a relationship between resistance to change and conflict of interest. The main goal of the research is to see how these two parameters will interact in the change process. I believe that conflict of interest is a very important issue but we could not see it in the literature as a scale or in relation with other factors. From this point, the aim of this study is to draw attention to the issue.
