ORG5003 Module 4 resistance analysis example

We Will Lose the Realtors: Answering the Strongest Objection to a Title Firm's Shared Production Center With a Pilot, a Service Guarantee and a Concession

Student Name

American College of Education

ORG5003: Organizational Dynamics & Change Management

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

August 17, 2025

Resistance as Information

Module 3 chose an adapted Kotter sequence for Harborline Title and Escrow's move to a shared production center, with the design built in workshops led by the firm's senior examiner. The announcement to branch managers produced objections within a day, and it would be easy to file them under change aversion. The research advises against that. Piderit (2000) argued that responses to change are rarely simple opposition; they combine beliefs, emotions and intentions that may point in different directions, and much of what is called resistance is ambivalence, which can be worked with. Oreg (2006) found that how a change was introduced, how far people trusted those leading it, how well informed they were kept and whether it put their jobs, influence or standing at risk, explained resistance better than a general disposition to dislike change.

Both findings fit Harborline. The people objecting are not resisting change in general; they are responding to specific threats that the diagnosis in Modules 1 and 2 already identified. An objection from the people with the most to lose is the cheapest test the plan will ever receive.

The Strongest Objection, Stated Fairly

The three highest-volume branch managers made the same argument, and it deserves to be stated in its strongest form. Their branches produce 46 percent of the firm's orders, and about 70 percent of those come from realtors and lenders who have worked with the same manager for years. Those partners choose Harborline because a local examiner turns a commitment around in about three days and fixes a title problem the same afternoon when a closing is at risk. A shared production queue, the managers argue, will move their files to the firm average of five to six days, and their partners will send the next order to a competitor that still has a local examiner. If they are right, the change could cost more in lost orders than it saves in idle capacity.

Testing the Objection

Two kinds of evidence bear on the claim. The first comes from the informal trading of searches that Module 1 uncovered. Nearly a quarter of the three busiest branches' searches last year were handled as favors by examiners elsewhere in the firm. Matching those files in the order records shows a median of 3.4 business days from order to commitment for traded searches against 3.1 days for searches done locally, a difference of less than half a day, and no difference in post-closing corrections. Work done remotely by a capable examiner was not noticeably slower.

The second is a pilot. With the senior examiner's help, two branches that volunteered, one founding branch and one shore office, sent all searches for eight weeks to a pilot production team of four examiners on the single system. Median time to commitment at the two branches fell from five days to three, and corrections fell from 3.1 to 1.4 per 100 files at the shore office. The pilot was small and its branches were volunteers, so it does not prove the objection wrong for every branch. It does show that a shared team can match the service the managers value, not merely approach it.

Answering It

The design will change in three ways because of the objection. First, every branch will have a written service guarantee from the production center: 90 percent of commitments within three business days and same-day response to any title problem flagged as threatening a closing, reported to the branch manager weekly. Second, each branch will have a named pair of examiners in the center who handle most of its work, so the branch and its partners still deal with people who know their files. Third, branch managers will be able to escalate any file directly to the production center lead, who reports to the chief operating officer. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) listed participation and involvement among the main ways of dealing with resistance and noted that they work best where those resisting have information and power the change needs. The three managers have both, and each will sit on the steering group that reviews the guarantee monthly.

Part of the objection is right, and the plan concedes it. Complex commercial files and same-day curative work on problem titles depend on the judgment of an examiner who knows local practice and local attorneys. The three high-volume branches will each keep one examiner on site for that work, reducing the savings from the center by about $186,000 a year but removing the risk that matters most to the managers.

The Other Objections

Examiners fear for their jobs, and their fear is reasonable: By the Module 1 arithmetic, shared work would leave roughly five or six of today's 19 examiner positions surplus. The answer is a commitment of no layoffs from the change. The reduction will come through two planned retirements and normal departures over 18 months, and examiners who prefer settlement work will be offered processor or closer roles at their current pay. The shore offices distrust headquarters because of the dropped 2019 checklist. They will convert to the single system first, since the pilot showed their correction rate falls the most, and one of their examiners will co-lead the design workshops. Branch identity itself is not the enemy of the change; branches will still own their clients, and the lobby plaque will now be awarded for client service scores as well as orders.

What the Objection Changed

It is worth recording how much the plan changed because the branch managers objected. Before the objection, the design had one production queue, no written service standard, no named examiners for each branch and no on-site examiners at all. After it, the design has a guarantee the managers can hold the center to, pairs of examiners each branch will come to know, a direct escalation route and three on-site examiners for the work that most needs local judgment. The savings are smaller by about a third, but the change is now one the most influential managers in the firm helped to shape and have a reason to defend. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) warned that participation takes time and can produce a weaker solution if handled badly; here, the participants improved the solution because they knew something the designers did not.

What Remains Uncertain

Two uncertainties should be stated plainly. The pilot ran in a slow season, and the service guarantee has not been tested in the spring rush, when order volume rises by about a third. And no amount of evidence will fully reassure a manager whose income depends on a handful of relationships until those relationships have come through the change intact. The steering group will therefore track orders from each branch's top 20 referral partners monthly for the first year, and a fall of more than 10 percent at any high-volume branch will trigger a review of that branch's service before it becomes a loss.

References

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

Piderit, S. K. (2000). Rethinking resistance and recognizing ambivalence: A multidimensional view of attitudes toward an organizational change. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 783-794. https://doi.org/10.2307/259206