Study guide
14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors
APMG Change Management Foundation Exam
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1 Chapter 1: The v3 Foundation Exam and the Organisational Context
1.1 Exam Structure, the Five Syllabus Areas and the Certification Path 1.2 Scene Setting: External and Internal Factors Shaping Change 1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits
2 Chapter 2: Understanding the Change Context
2.1 Kelman's Three Levels of Adoption 2.2 VUCA and the Cynefin Framework 2.3 Planned Change versus Emergent Change 2.4 Systems Thinking in Change 2.5 Organisational Culture and Its Three Levels
3 Chapter 3: Diagnosing and Structuring the Change Approach
3.1 Lewin's Force Field Analysis 3.2 Co-Design 3.3 The ADKAR Model 3.4 Evolving the n-Step Process and Kotter's Eight Accelerators
4 Chapter 4: Delivery Strategy, Agile Practices and the Change Strategy
4.1 Delivery Strategy: Big Bang, Phased, Voluntary and Iterative 4.2 Agile Practices and Agile Change Practices 4.3 The Continuous Change Management Cycle 4.4 The Change Strategy
5 Chapter 5: People and Change — Individual Difference and Response
5.1 Differences in People and Personality Preferences 5.2 Neuroscience and Change: SCARF, Mindset and Insight 5.3 The Change Curve 5.4 Bridges' Transition Model
6 Chapter 6: Motivation, Resilience and Learning
6.1 Rewards, Punishment and Pink's Three Motivators 6.2 Positive Psychology, Resilience and Appreciative Inquiry 6.3 The Beckhard-Harris Change Formula and Schein's Two Anxieties 6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip 6.5 Learning Preferences: Kolb, Honey and Mumford
7 Chapter 7: Key Roles in Change Leadership
7.1 Key Roles in the Change Process 7.2 The Role of the Change Sponsor 7.3 The Change Agent's Role and Personal Influence 7.4 The Role of Local Leadership in Change
8 Chapter 8: Psychological Safety, Leadership and Culture
8.1 Psychological Climate and Psychological Safety 8.2 Carolyn Taylor: How Leadership Shapes Culture 8.3 Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate
9 Chapter 9: Teams and Change
9.1 Team Structures and Change Agent Networks 9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development 9.3 Lencioni: Assessing and Growing Team Effectiveness 9.4 Harvesting the Value of Team Diversity
10 Chapter 10: Stakeholder Identification, Analysis and Engagement
10.1 Stakeholder Definition and Identification 10.2 Stakeholder Analysis, Segmentation and Empathy Mapping 10.3 Stakeholder Mapping and Sources of Power 10.4 Barriers to Engagement 10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement
11 Chapter 11: Communication Theory, Messaging and Emotional Connection
11.1 Communication Theory and the Communication Process 11.2 Barriers to Communication and Cognitive Biases 11.3 Messaging: Setting Context and the Tell, Sell, Include Approach 11.4 Appealing to Hearts and Minds
12 Chapter 12: Communication Channels and Planning
12.1 Ways of Communicating and VARK Language Style Preferences 12.2 Communication Channels: One-Way, Two-Way, Lean and Rich 12.3 Communications Planning
13 Chapter 13: Assessing Change Impact and Severity
13.1 Change Management as Risk Management and the Two-Step Assessment 13.2 Step 1: Categorising Impacts and Identifying Impact Areas 13.3 Step 1 Continued: Gap Analysis, Impact Profiles and Monitoring 13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity
14 Chapter 14: Resistance to Change
14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors 14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them 14.3 Building a Strategy to Manage Resistance
15 Chapter 15: Change Analytics and Exam Readiness
15.1 Measurement Types and the Change Delivery Scorecard 15.2 Building a Change Analytics Strategy 15.3 Exam Technique and Final Revision
14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors
Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI
Oreg suggests four neural factors influencing resistance: routine seeking, emotional reaction to forced change, cognitive rigidity and short-term focus
Routine seeking reflects the effort of changing established mental maps and habits, often raising stress through learning dips and reduced cognitive functioning
Emotional reaction to forced change removes the sense of choice, a key element of the SCARF model
Cognitive rigidity is sticking to existing views and not believing you can learn, which is the opposite of a growth mindset
- Short-term focus is the cognitive tendency to overlook rewards the further away they are
- Last updated: September 2026
Neuroscience provides useful insights into why our brains do not like change. Oreg (2003) suggests there are four key neural factors which influence resistance , and CM3 notes these are applicable across diverse contexts and types of change .
- The four neural factors
- Routine seeking
Our brains work to create mental maps, forming habits (behaviours). These take time and effort to change. Often, they increase stress levels as we experience learning dips, low motivation or reduced cognitive functionality.
This is the most mechanical of the four. Habits are efficient precisely because they run without conscious effort; replacing one costs conscious attention, which is a limited resource. The connection CM3 draws to the learning dip is important — routine seeking is not stubbornness but the accurate anticipation of a real cost.
It connects to Rock's observation that people operate on the basis of mental maps which usually change only through moments of insight.
Emotional reaction to forced change
Forced change takes away our sense of choice, a key element of the SCARF model. Choice plays a big role in our ownership and willingness to change.
The SCARF element is autonomy . This factor is the clearest argument for co-design in the whole syllabus: resistance is generated by the forcing , independently of the content of the change. The same change offered with genuine choice about implementation provokes a materially weaker reaction than the same change imposed.
It also explains a pattern change managers see constantly — a group resisting a change they would have chosen themselves, because they did not choose it.
Cognitive rigidity
People tend to stick to the views that they already have. Individuals are less willing to adapt to new situations or do not believe they can learn. This is the opposite of a growth mindset.
CM3 makes the link to Dweck explicit. Cognitive rigidity has two components: sticking to existing views, and not believing you can learn. The second is the more damaging in change, because it produces avoidance rather than argument. Someone who believes they are too old to learn a new system will not debate the system; they will find reasons to avoid situations that expose them.
The practical marker: statements about the self rather than the change . "This system is badly designed" is an argument. "I'm too old to learn something new and I'll probably be bad at it" is cognitive rigidity.
Short-term focus
Our cognitive tendency to overlook rewards the further away they are. CM3's examples: the urge to spend as we earn over saving for a rainy day , or performance metrics that drive short term (a sales target) over long term (a collaborative employee culture) outcomes .
Change has an inherently unfavourable time profile: the costs — disruption, learning, effort — are immediate and certain, while the benefits are distant and probabilistic. Short-term focus means the brain discounts the distant benefits, so even a change with an excellent long-run case can feel like a bad deal.
The second example is worth noting because it locates the problem in the organisation rather than the individual. Metrics that reward short-term outcomes institutionalise short-term focus, which returns to the sponsor's responsibility to align reward systems and Carolyn Taylor's point about systems.
Matching interventions to the factor
The four factors have genuinely different remedies, which is what makes the diagnosis worth making:
Factor What actually helps
Routine seeking Practice time, phased habit change, temporary support, honest acknowledgement of the learning dip
Emotional reaction to forced change Restore choice wherever it exists — co-design, options on implementation, involvement in decisions
Cognitive rigidity Growth-mindset framing, safe practice, early small successes, peers who have made the transition
Short-term focus Bring benefits forward — short-term wins, visible early results, and interim rewards that make the near term worth it
Note how badly a single generic "communicate the benefits" response serves this list. It addresses none of the four directly. Someone stuck in routine seeking needs practice, not persuasion; someone reacting to forced change needs choice, not explanation; someone with cognitive rigidity needs a safe early success, not an argument; and someone with short-term focus needs the reward moved closer, not described more vividly.
Resistance as information
CM3's broader framing, developed in the next section, is that resistance can be helpful . Read through Oreg, that makes sense: each of the four factors is a signal about a real cost the change imposes. Routine seeking signals that the habit change has been underestimated. Reaction to forced change signals that autonomy has been removed unnecessarily. Cognitive rigidity signals that psychological safety is too low for people to risk being bad at something. Short-term focus signals that the near-term experience of the change is worse than has been acknowledged.
Treated as information rather than obstruction, each of those signals improves the change.