Novel Approach to the Actions for Causes Elimination of Staff Resistance to Innovative Change

PURPOSE: Commonly, employees’ resistance to innovation is one of the main barriers to innovative change and one of the negative stimuli of employment relationships in the health-care institutions. Identifying the reasons of resistance is a topical issue for every organization, as the speed of change always affect their competitiveness. Aim of the study is to develop a methodology, which would facilitate the choice of an appropriate strategy necessary to enable the health-care organizations to eliminate or at least to reduce resistance to often essential innovative changes. METHODS: The model was formed on the basis of the empirical research as a result of voluntary survey. The new approach manifests itself in original solutions by applying the method of quantitative modeling. This method is designed to calculate the strength of the resistance impact to innovation. A total of 217 employees were interviewed in two of the most innovative public Lithuanian primary health-care clinics (Vilnius and Kaunas university clinics). RESULTS: Using a mathematical approach, the causes of change resistance were ranked and the suggested respective strategies were represented graphically and expressed in the form of a model. Its use will enhance the innovation capacity of the organization by avoiding or mitigating staff resistance. CONCLUSION: Based on aggregate information from numerous sources, the article pinpoints the causes and briefly reviews possible ways to eliminate resistance to innovation. Suggested methodology is based on quantitative modeling method. Such use of modeling methodology can help the administrators of health-care institutions to eliminate causes of staff resistance for change, and such circumstances will accelerate innovation development. The article reviews the strategies for resistance elimination and assigns them to each specific cause.