Organizational Change during crises. The transition to E-learning at the university of Udine during the COVID 19 emergency

Introduction 
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countries, block all their activities for a virus, imposing to their citizens a “lockdown.” It 
is precisely under situations like this one that the organizations have to be ready to react 
to the forced change. This stressful challenge obliged all the universities that had face-to-
face lessons to move all their teaching online. The complexity was generated by the short 
time available. Therefore, in this period of Coronavirus, all the people must stay at home 
in quarantine, and this creates problems not only for the academic offer but even for the 
students’ motivation degree. 
Here the thesis found its ground, during a period of forced change for all the 
structures, in particular for the academics one. This dissertation has analyzed the 
problems related to the organizational resistance, and then it focused on forced change, 
which hit the University of Udine. It was created a survey to study how the “resistances”, 
which are caused by this forced change, have influenced students. Through the 
questionnaire, it was possible to focus on the three principal aspects of the forced change 
during this switch from face-to-face lessons to online ones and understand which are 
those that influence more students. These primary resistances are the lack of resources, 
the different environment for studying, and the lack of motivation due to the 
impossibility to modify the change. All these three considerations incise the change that 
students have to deal with in this difficult period. The possibility to understand which is 
the more significant issue that influences and makes change difficult is an essential 
consideration to remember for the future. Indeed, knowing which are the transformation 
weakness, it is possible remedies or at least reduces them. Therefore, from this thesis, it 
should be possible to obtain a clear vision on which aspects are more critical during 
online lessons. The University of Udine can use it to structure future strategies for 
reducing problems related to the online lessons and prevent, a little, some negative 
resistances.  
The thesis is structured in four principals chapters that analyze all these things, 
starting from the general aspects to the more detailed, which is presented in the last one, 
with the questionnaire.