Samenvatting

Employee resistance to change is a key factor to turnaround failure. Interim managers who support companies in financial distress, mediate between employees, management, shareholders, bank, and other stakeholders in order to solve organisational conflicts. This article explores the internal social dynamic aspects of a turnaround. It develops a theoretical framework on the role of trust, emotion and communication, and its affect on reducing internal resistance, and describes the outcomes of an exploratory research study. Findings confirm that employee motivation to make a reorganisation a success significantly impacts upon turnaround success. Resistance can be reduced by an open communication climate, offering a new perspective, attention to emotions, managing by walking around, and ‘practicing what you preach’. More research is necessary to generalize the findings and to better understand success and failure factors.