| Course | BU 427 Change Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 6 |
| Paper type | Resistance source analysis |
| Length | About 1,080 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 427 Unit 6
The Reader Who Would Not Pick the Test Sites Was Right: A Resistance Source Analysis of Four Instances of Pushback Against a Composite Utility's Automated Meters
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 427: Change Management
Instructor Name
March 25, 2026
The Reader Who Would Not Pick the Test Sites Was Right: A Resistance Source Analysis of Four Instances of Pushback Against a Composite Utility's Automated Meters
Resistance as Information
Resistance is treated here as a response to something the change does to a person, not as a trait some people have. Ford et al. (2008) argue that change agents often help create the resistance they then blame on recipients, through broken agreements, poor explanations or ignoring objections, and they treat pushback as something a change agent can learn from and use to make the change better. Oreg (2006) found that resistance was predicted more strongly by features of the situation, among them how far employees trusted their managers, how well informed they were and whether they feared for their jobs, than by personality.
Below are four instances of pushback from the invented Cedar Prairie utility, where manual meter routes are being replaced. Each occurred in the weeks after the first three planned messages in spring 2026. Each is read in the same shape: what happened, what the change costs the person, which of four sources it reflects and what evidence supports that reading. The four sources are loss of something concrete, doubt that the change will work, disagreement with the reasoning, and exhaustion left by earlier changes. A response follows each, matched to its source.
Instance 1: The Senior Reader and the Test Sites
What happened: the operations manager asked the most senior meter reader, 18 years on the east side routes, to help choose 60 basement locations for test meters. He declined and told colleagues the test would prove nothing because engineering had already picked the sites from a map.
Reading: this could be taken as loss of standing, an expert whose knowledge is about to become unnecessary. The evidence points instead to disagreement with the reasoning. When the operations manager checked, the engineering list had indeed been drawn from property records, favoring basements that were easy to reach. The reader's point was that the hard cases, meters behind stone foundations, under porches or in flooded crawlspaces, were missing, so a successful test would be misleading. He was right.
Response: the plan changes. The test list is rebuilt with the reader choosing 40 of the 60 sites, and the test report will name him as the source of the site list. This is the instance that is legitimate feedback, and treating it as a personality problem would have produced a test designed to pass.
Instance 2: The Seniority Grievance
What happened: two of the younger readers, through their union steward, filed a grievance asking that the four technician positions be filled by seniority rather than by the skills assessment management had planned.
Reading: the source is loss. With nine reader positions becoming four technician roles, the two youngest readers stand to lose the most if selection favors experience, and more if it favors electrical aptitude they have not been trained in. The letters in Message 1 had named expected roles but had not explained how the four technicians were chosen, so the selection looked arbitrary. There is also a genuine process gap: the bargaining agreement requires consultation on new job classifications, which had not happened.
Response: negotiation, which Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) recommend when a group will clearly lose out and has the power to resist. Management and the union agree on selection criteria combining seniority with a training-based assessment, and anyone not selected keeps first right to the next technician opening. The loss is real and is acknowledged as such rather than argued away.
Instance 3: The Customer Service Representative Who Stopped Logging
What happened: a customer service representative with 11 years at the utility stopped recording customer questions in the shared log set up in Message 3 and told a colleague that hourly data would "just mean more angry calls, like last time."
Reading: the source is exhaustion from an earlier change. "Last time" refers to the 2019 billing conversion, when this representative took calls for five months about a system nobody had trained her to explain. Her prediction is partly correct: calls will almost certainly rise in each district's first month. It is not supported beyond that, since the winter re-bill calls that dominate her January will fall. The log itself became a symbol of extra work without extra help.
Response: facilitation rather than persuasion. The supervisor adds paid overtime hours for the first month of each district, pairs her with the vendor trainer to draft answers to the ten most common questions, and replaces the log with a two-click form. The objection about workload is accepted as accurate for the short term and planned for.
Instance 4: The Neighborhood Petition
What happened: a council member forwarded a petition signed by 240 residents of the first district asking the utility to stop the project because hourly meter data would let the utility watch when households are home, and because the data would be sold.
Reading: the source is doubt, and it splits in two. The concern about occupancy is true: hourly electricity use can show when a house is empty. The claim that the data will be sold is not; nothing in the project or the vendor contract provides for that. Both reflect a message gap, since customers had heard about the meters before the utility had published any data policy.
Response: the true part changes the plan and the untrue part is answered. The commission adopts a written data policy limiting access to hourly data to the account holder and to named billing and outage functions, and offers a non-transmitting meter to customers who opt out, for a monthly reading fee. The policy is sent to every first-district household before installation.
What the Pattern Says About the Plan
Read together, the four instances say less about the people than about the plan. In three of four, the resistance pointed to something the plan had not done: consulted readers on the test, explained selection, published a data policy. In the fourth, it pointed to a past failure the plan had promised not to repeat but had not yet resourced. The plan was built by managers and engineers, and each gap sat where the people carrying it out knew something the designers did not. The practical conclusion is to bring a reader, a customer service representative and a union steward onto the project team now. The utility, the four instances and every person in them are composites written for this course.
References
Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235
Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (1979). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 57(2), 106-114.
Oreg, S. (2006). Personality, context, and resistance to organizational change. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 15(1), 73-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320500451247
The Herzing BU 427 Unit 6 instructions
For the sixth unit, BU 427 asks students to analyze resistance to a change. Typical requirements include several instances of resistance, an explanation of the likely source of each, a classification using a framework from the literature, a response matched to each source and a conclusion about what the resistance suggests. Instructors increasingly expect students to recognize that some resistance is legitimate feedback that should change the plan. Common frameworks draw on Kotter and Schlesinger, Oreg, or Ford and colleagues. Instances should be composite rather than drawn from a real workplace. Plan on roughly three to five APA 7 pages, often with one section per instance and a closing section on the overall pattern.
Inside the BU 427 Unit 6 example
The analysis begins by rejecting resistance as a trait, citing research on situational causes, and sets out four sources: loss, doubt, disagreement with reasoning and exhaustion from past change. Each of the four instances then follows the same structure. The senior reader's refusal is first read as loss of standing, then reclassified as disagreement when the engineering site list proves biased toward easy basements. The grievance is traced to a concrete loss and an unmet consultation duty. The representative's withdrawal is linked to 2019. The petition is split into a true privacy concern and an untrue claim about selling data. The closing section finds that three of four instances pointed to something the plan had not done.
BU 427 Unit 6 rubric: what full points look like
Herzing's resistance analysis rubric usually awards points for identifying and describing instances, diagnosing sources with evidence, applying a framework, matching responses to sources and drawing overall conclusions, with a share for writing and APA. Diagnosis earns the most when alternative readings are considered and rejected with reasons. The framework criterion rewards consistent use of named categories. Responses score highest when each fits its source, for example negotiation for concrete loss and facilitation for exhaustion, rather than one response applied to everything. The conclusion criterion pays for recognizing legitimate resistance and for drawing a lesson about the plan itself. Instructors also credit papers that avoid describing resisters as difficult people.
BU 427 Unit 6 help: mistakes that cost points
A common mistake in resistance papers is treating all pushback as a problem to overcome, which misses objections that are correct. Another is labeling resisters by personality, calling them negative or stuck, without asking what the change costs them. Students often apply the same response, usually more communication or training, to every instance regardless of its source. Some present instances with no evidence for the diagnosis, making the classification arbitrary. Others describe real colleagues from their workplace in recognizable detail, which raises privacy and confidentiality concerns. Finally, papers that end by summarizing the four cases, without saying what they reveal about the plan, miss the analytical step that earns the conclusion points.
Get a BU 427 Unit 6 example written to your instructions
Attach the Unit 6 instructions with the BU 427 rubric and any scenario or incidents the assignment supplies. We write a custom example that defines the sources first, describes behavior rather than people, names what each person loses and matches a response to every source separately. First custom sample free, returned in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 427 Unit 6 questions, answered
Can I use resistance I have actually seen at work?
Not in the detail that would make it recognizable, and usually not at all. What colleagues said during a change, how a manager reacted and what was written in internal messages belong to the employer and to the people involved. Build composite instances that behave the same way, say that you have, and the analysis criterion scores identically.
Is all resistance worth listening to?
Not all, but more than most plans assume, and the assignment is asking you to tell them apart. Somebody protecting a workaround that hides a real defect is providing information. Somebody who dislikes being told is not. The work sits in the evidence you give for placing each instance, not in a general conclusion that resistance is healthy or unhealthy.
What response should I recommend for each source?
One that matches what the source actually is. A doubt about capability responds to practice and support; a loss of standing responds to something real being offered or to an honest acknowledgment; a substantive disagreement responds to argument or to a change in the plan. A single response applied to all four is the answer markers see most often and score lowest.
Where can I find a free BU 427 Unit 6 sample paper?
This page offers the entire BU 427 Unit 6 resistance source analysis for free, with four instances, a matched response to each and margin notes. For different instances or a different change, send your prompt and a custom analysis is drafted at no cost, typically within 48 hours.
Is all resistance bad in BU 427 Unit 6?
No. The sample shows one instance that was simply correct, a reader who knew the test sites were too easy, and the plan changed because of it. Instructors reward papers that separate legitimate objections from those that are not.