Managing In-Company Standardization While Avoiding Resistance: A Philosophical-Empirical Approach

Standards may be an advantage for a company, but employees often resist them because they feel they are forced to behave in a certain way. Even a broad approach like TQM seems to have to too little focus on the ‘human aspects’ to prevent resistance and failure during change projects like in-company standardization. This paper uses a philosophical approach to study why staff tend to resist company standardisation initiatives. Foucault and Habermas provide insights into the reasons for this resistance but do not solve the tension between freedom and control. Dooyeweerd’s philosophy seems to be more promising. This paper uses a company standardisation project of an automotive supplier to examine three philosophical approaches to understand resistance to standards and to investigate how this resistance can be avoided by managing in-company standardisation in a more holistic way.