Title: Manufacturing workers: exploring the ability to change

Authors: Alan D. Smith

Addresses: Robert Morris University, Department of Management and Marketing, Pittsburgh, PA 15219-3099, USA

Abstract: Historically, the implementation of change in an organisation is often not well received by both manufacturing and knowledge workers. It is difficult to simultaneously encourage individual success within a firm and de-emphasise the difficulty that is frequently associated with change. To promote change within an organisation, people must be encouraged to innovate, form trust-relationships with the management, and be properly rewarded for promoting such change and innovation. To measure this change, the Reaction-to- Change (RTC) Inventory was employed. The RTC is an easy-to-use and broadly applicable tool originally developed by DeMeuse and McDaris. It can help trainers foster organisational change. Also, some of the traps that the management encounters during this difficult process of organisational change can be bypassed by identifying the degree of resistance to change. The results of this inventory were derived from a sample of 100 skilled manufacturing workers in a focused factory operation in Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Keywords: chaos theory; complexity theory; empirical study; manufacturing workers; motivational pay; resistance to change; SME; strategy; organisational change; change management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMED.2004.004524

International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, 2004 Vol.1 No.3, pp.251 - 267

Published online: 21 May 2004 *

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