An alternative approach on resistance to change and leadership and its resulting development of Kotter’s change models.

Abstract: To stay competitive in today’s business environments companies have to adapt to the fast-changing business conditions. Hereby change management plays an important role; companies and consultants often apply certain change models to plan and implement change projects. The two change models by John Kotter, published in 1996 and 2014 are one of the most famous and most often applied ones. Within this thesis, the authors developed a modified change management model where they developed Kotter’s ideas further and enlarged them with new perspectives that were not included before. Resistance to change is considered in the new approach from a positive perspective, which means that it is seen as an opportunity instead of being an obstacle. Besides that, the modified change model includes several leadership aspects that were neglected in Kotter’s change models. New leadership aspects are reflection, a concrete leadership style, sensemaking, as well as the different leadership characters between female and male leader. Out of these new insights, the authors developed a modified change model, which allows to plan and manage the change project better than before.