Managing Organizational Change: Theoretical Foundations, Resistance, and Strategic Practice in the Modern Industrial Enterprise

Change has become the one constant that every organization, regardless of size, sector, or geography, must learn to live with. This paper examines organizational change management as both a field of academic inquiry and a practical discipline, tracing its conceptual roots from Kurt Lewin's mid-twentieth-century field theory through to more recent frameworks such as Kotter's eight-stage model and Hiatt's ADKAR approach. It explores why individuals and groups resist change, drawing on Kotter and Schlesinger's classic diagnosis of resistance and their six-lever response framework, and it considers how external forces: technological disruption, liberalization, globalization, and shifting competitive dynamics: compel organizations, particularly those in the industrial sector, to treat change competence as a core managerial capability rather than an occasional project. The paper closes by discussing the leadership and cultural conditions that make change stick, and by reflecting on the limitations of linear change models in a business environment where change is no longer episodic but continuous.