Abstract

Organisational change processes are frequently described by organisations as accompanied by resistance and conflict. Traditional change management literature often treats these phenomena as objective obstacles to implementation. In contrast, systemic and constructivist approaches emphasise that such phenomena are not objective realities but rather interpretations constructed through communication and perception. This study explores how systemic change facilitators perceive and address resistance and conflict during organisational transformation processes. Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with systemic change practitioners and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings suggest that resistance and conflict are constructed and interpreted by practitioners not as problems to eliminate but as meaningful signals within organisational communication phenomena. The systemic stance plays a central role in enabling constructive engagement with these perceived dynamics. Rather than attempting to control behaviour, systemic change facilitators focus on understanding context, carefully generating hypotheses, and facilitating dialogue within the organisation. The results highlight the relevance of systemic thinking in organisational change and underline the value of qualitative constructivist research for understanding complex social phenomena in organisations. The study contributes to a growing body of research that reframes resistance and conflict as constructs rather than observations or occurring measurable phenomena.