A Critical Analysis Of The Role Of Change Agents In Facilitating Change

Facilitating Organizational Change is a book that approaches organizational change as a profoundly difficult process that requires durable, time tested tools to master. The facilitator for this change is provided with the appropriate level of tools to approach the change situation from three different perspectives: Infrastructural, Cultural, and Individual. All of the tools have been tested by the author and his clients for the past twenty years, across a broad range of change efforts in research and development, the automotive industry, electronics, insurance and financial services, printing and publishing, paper products, government, utilities, and higher education. This book approaches the anxiety that surrounds change with a methodology that uses the disequilibrium as a driver for the culture to reassess how it does what it does. It facilitates the culture into operationalizing the need to reinvent itself in a fashion that allows for there to be closer alignment between what people's true values and needs are and how those needs can be optimally realized through the organizational systems within the culture.

From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.

This excellent book remaps the limits and possibilities of change, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective and critical review of key literature and empirical research, it will help students contextualize this complex subject area and independently evaluate future prospects for effective change agent roles in organizations Presenting an interdisciplinary exploration of competing discourses, the book uses two overarching conceptual continua: centred agency-decentred agency and systems-processes, thereby allowing a more intensive focus on agency and change. Well-written with challenging content, this book is essential reading for those interested in the origins, development and future prospects for change agency in an organizational world characterized by increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.

Despite the popularity of organizational change management, the question arises whether its prescriptions and dominant beliefs and practices are based on solid and convergent evidence. Organizational change management entails interventions intended to influence the task-related behavior and associated results of an individual, team, or entire organization. There is a perception that a lot of change initiatives fail and limited understanding about what works and what does not and why. Drawing on the field of psychology and based on primary research, Reconsidering Change Management identifies 18 popular and relevant commonly held assumptions with regard to change management that are then analyzed and compared to the four specific themes laid out in the book (people, leadership, organization, and change process), resulting in their own set of assumptions. Each assumption will have a brief introduction in which its relevance and popularity is explained. By studying the scientific evidence, in particular meta-analytic evidence, the book provides students and academics in the fields of change management, organizational behavior, and business strategy the best available evidence for the acceptance or dropping of certain (change) management assumptions and their accompanying practices. By exploring the topics people, leadership, organization, and process, and the related assumptions, change management is restructured and reframed in a prudent, positive, and practical way.

If you look at the operations of any successful organization, you will see one constant. That constant is change. This book is about leading change. You see in our constantly changing world, an organization's ability to lead change is critical to its success. We know that change leadership-the way the change is led-directly affects the outcome of the change effort. And yet so often, leaders struggle with their change efforts. We also know that change impacts and is impacted by people. How people respond to change often determines whether change is successfully adopted and implemented, or if it remains merely an idea or concept. Because of this "people factor," change must be led. If we know this, why do change agents repeatedly fail to address the "people factor" as they lead change? Change is hard...and sometimes -- no matter how well, often and frequently we communicate-in some instances, people can be so resistant to change that they cannot see beyond their own personal agendas to understand and embrace the benefits of the change. These resistors to change are passionate about maintaining the status quo-so passionate that they often emerge as leaders, either openly or covertly, of a movement to thwart the change effort. We live in a world full of change. And the list of change scenarios in our world is long. To be sure it is not within the scope of this book to attempt to provide a discourse on every possible change-scenario, related issues, technologies, or industries/organizations engaged in the transformation, etc. There is a plethora of books and papers devoted to change, change management, making change, managing change, and similar subjects. Leading Change is different. Instead of focusing specifically on one of these topics, it focuses on leading change from a practical/practitioner's point of view. In this book you will discover 16 Key Change Factors (KCFs) or attributes of change that when understood can assist in the change leadership process. As you read the chapters of this book, you will unwrap these KCFs in more detail and review a few case studies of change leadership in action at other companies, as well as examples from my own professional experience. Each section includes CAPs or Change Agent Principles that provide a quick summary of key take-aways for change leadership and change agents. Key Thoughts and Questions help you probe more deeply into change opportunities in your organization and there is a list of referenced Section Resources to provide additional details and improve your understanding of the key concepts and/or topics presented in the section. Finally, you'll read about some of the amazing changes occurring right around us to see how companies and individuals are leading change in our world. My hope is that the change agent principles and examples of change leadership in this book will encourage and inspire you to lead and/or help make change happen in your organization.

Despite the plethora of books on change, there appears a notable gap in the field; rarely is the authentic and candid voice of change agents heard. How often do academics or practitioners candidly state what they actually do when they are faced with managing change in their own organisations or when they are called on in a consultancy capacity? In this new book, the editors bring together a diverse group of contributors who have worked as Internal Change Agents in organizations to divulge what they really do and think about change. The authors draw on their own research work involving change agents and their change interventions and include current reflections on the post-Covid world of work, and the change required for achieving change interventions successfully. Each contribution offers perspectives from real change programmes, in both the public and private sector, offering a unique opportunity to move beyond theory and understand change in practice. The book offers valuable insights for academics and students of organisational change and behaviour, leadership and organisational development.

Healthcare organisations have to manage change in order to evolve and improve care. This book explores the use of reflective practice as a practical tool to examine growth and change and to develop an effective health care organisation.