Human response to change

I was thinking about human response to change. Most models in organizational psychology include a transition from normality to a period of disruption (generally accompanied by decreased performance), then return to re-defined normality. For example, Lewin’s (1952) model of freezing the normal state, moving, and then unfreezing. Or the Kubler-Ross (1969) model, where people go through various stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Interestingly, although the Kubler-Ross model was originally created to model reaction to death and dying, it has been shown to apply to people responding to significant change in organizational settings (Zell, 2003).

It strikes me that there do not seem to be any valid models of human reaction to constant change (that I know of). I vaguely remember reading in my org psych class about systems of constant change, but I do not remember reading about any models explaining human reaction to such change. So how do humans react to environments of constant change? Do the same models apply?

I had a conversation with Jeff Patton at the CHI conference last month, and he talked about people who had strongly practiced pair programming in the past had now gone back to working separately for the most part. Aside from the fact that pair programming might have diminishing benefits, could this reversion simply be a reaction to change? It would be interesting to study the long term adoption of these kinds of practices.

I guess this is why some people stay in school their entire lives…