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In this paper we present a system of distributed co‐operating agents whose goal is to manage change and organise version sets in an engineering environment. The agents are designed for full lifecycle support and inter‐operation across heterogeneous networks. The agent communication is based on common object request broker architecture (CORBA) but an extra messaging layer is developed which utilises a language built in Vienna development method‐specification language (VDM‐SL). Problems encountered in the use of engineering database management systems are investigated and solutions are proposed in the context of agents. A version model is presented in two ways; informally based on our assumptions on a general design process and formally in VDM‐SL. An industrial case study is presented and preliminary results shown.

The current case study investigated how intentional, systematic planning can help organizations harness the energy of these willing allies who may be motivated to support change. The focus of the study is the development of a peer-to-peer approach, involving “Equity Leaders (ELs),” that was part of a larger, multi-level organization change initiative that addressed personal, interpersonal and structural considerations at a mid-sized public university in northeastern USA.

The authors used multiple methods to collect data for the current study, including observations and interviews. Over the course of four years, the authors attended more than 50 EL meetings. In these meetings, the authors took notes regarding ELs' discussions on workshop development and planning, debates on workshop substances and ELs' personal reflections on these workshops. Following the fourth year of the program, the first two authors invited all current ELs to participate in semi-structured, open-ended interviews about their experience.

The case study shows that through careful planning, peer change can play multiple roles in pushing organizational changes. By embracing their formal responsibilities and yielding their informal power, change agents are able to cause radiating impact across as organizations. Organizations can also capitalize on the fact that employees are more likely to be engaged in the change effort when it is promoted by peers. Finally, the support and resources from the organizational leaders is important because these inputs not only legitimize change agents' roles but they also signify the importance of the actions.

This study has limitations. First, the authors recognize that this was a qualitative study grounded in a single context. Although the study explored a novel context for understanding change agents—a deliberately planned initiative targeting social norms through addressing subtle biases like microaggressions—the authors recognize that additional examination would be necessary to understand how implementation may work in different contexts or organization types. Second, the authors also acknowledge that the authors’ positionality, as females studying a change initiative targeting gendered and intersectional microaggressions, may have shaped the role as researchers.

The findings underscore the notion that allies can serve as organized peer change agents to affect organizational culture. In alignment with the principles in the social ecological framework, the approach involved selecting change agents who are internal to the organization, have informal influence or power and can broaden the impact to other parts of the organization. Moreover, the results underscore the need for organizations to provide essential support and resources that can assist change agents to bridge organizational goals and individual actions.

The purpose of this paper is to review the change process that is required to support CANDO, a business improvement technique primarily associated with the manufacturing sector. It reviews the transferability of CANDO to a health setting and examines the effectiveness of this tool through the eyes of the change agents and implementers. The study draws on an ongoing empirical research study in the NHS.

The methodology is a case study, combining semi‐structured interviews, observations and reflexive accounts.

The results show that this improvement tool is an appropriate mechanism as a foundation for developing change agents and for creating change in health care. The capability and competence of the change agent is critical to the success of a change programme. Specific skills include developing people outside of their normal functional boundaries, redefining values and norms, motivating and energising others, translating terminology, setting the initiative within the wider agenda for change, and designing and communicating solutions and new systems as a result of CANDO activities.

As the research focuses on one NHS Trust within the UK this limits the generalisibility of the results. However, the results provide an important insight into developing change agents, their role while identifying enablers and inhibitors to the change process.

This paper records the early stages of what is a large‐scale and long‐term improvement programme from the perspective of the change agent. This is an important perspective that is often overlooked when examining change programmes.

The concept of common sense has not received much attention in the organization literature. In this paper, I propose a model that links a change agent's self‐awareness and reflexivity, his or her sensemaking of common sense perspectives related to planned change, and buy‐in among organization stakeholders. The case is made for change agents to pay close attention to common sense perspectives because they can become the basis for particular problematic ambivalence and diminished change buy‐in among stakeholders in the organization. This paper aims to address these issues.

Conceptual and theoretical rationales for the model are offered. Examples from the psychological and organizational theory literatures provide support for the various elements of the model.

Common sense perspectives should be factored into the diagnosis of the organization. Self‐awareness, reflexivity, and sensemaking are all forms of social awareness that are necessary to engage stakeholders on matters of common sense.

Four research areas are identified. First, social and cultural contextual influences on common sense require clarification. Second, if resistance is multidimensional, how are dimensions influenced by common sense? Third, what group level of the organization (e.g., individual, group, organization) do common sense perspectives represent? Fourth, how may change agents work out incommensurate common sense perspectives?

Common sense cannot be mandated. Change agents must maintain self‐awareness and reflexivity as they work with stakeholders in a sensemaking process. Increased buy‐in emerges through minimizing ambivalence towards change.

Little, if anything, has been written on the use of common sense in organizational change management.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-agent-based model for quantitatively measuring how the design change management strategies improve project performance.

Based on questionnaires and interviews, this paper investigates the coordination mechanism of risks due to design changes in prefabricated construction (PC) projects. Combined with all the variables related with design change risks, a multi-agent-based simulation model is proposed to evaluate the design change management effect.

The coordination mechanism between design change factors, design change events, risk consequence and management strategy in PC projects is described and then the simulation-based design change management mechanism in PC projects is used to assess the effect of management strategies under dynamic scenarios.

PC projects have rapidly increased in recent years due to the advantages of fast construction, high quality and labor savings. Different from traditional on-site construction, the impact and risk from design changes are likely to be greater due to the prefabricated project being multi-stage, highly interactive and complex. The simulations presented in this paper make it possible to test different design change management strategies in order to study their effectiveness and support managerial decision making.

Problems arose in the “market for information” (MFI) during the “dot.com” boom, the Enron case, Northern Rock failure and during the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the MFI through field research and theoretical sources. It also aims to understand the MFI during relatively stable periods and during periods of rapid change, crisis and failure. It seeks to use these insights to propose changes to reduce the possibilities for negative change and problems in the MFI.

Field studies are used to develop an “empirical narrative” for ongoing MFI structures, processes and outcomes during relatively stable periods. The paper develops a “theoretical narrative” to extend the understanding of the MFI empirical insights.

The paper reveals that the MFI structure that includes knowledge and social context is central to ongoing MFI economic processes for MFI agents. Outcomes include changes in markets, firms and others. Changes and problems are means to understand interactions between the MFI social structure, knowledge, actions and outcomes as they rendered visible the previously invisible issues.

The paper shows that a coherent combination of new empirical narrative and theoretical narrative is essential to develop a critical stance, new policy prescriptions and new regulations to deal with problems and changes in the MFI. This provides the frame to propose changes in the “world of knowledge” and in (concentrated and elite) social and economic structures in the MFI. It proposes: making explicit shared knowledge in the MFI, monitoring change processes and promoting active formal learning.

There is a growing consensus about the role of communication in facilitating employees' acceptance of and support for organizational change initiatives. However, little is known about why communication breakdowns occur during change or how change recipients' cultural values can influence the effectiveness of communication in this context. The study addresses this gap.

The authors develop a theoretical framework that links four purposes of communication during change—disrupting, envisioning, legitimizing, and co-creating—to change recipients' cultural orientations. The authors also develop propositions that highlight how change agents' cultural sensitivity influences the relationship between communication purpose and the change readiness of change recipients.

The study implies that greater awareness and consideration of cultural values can reduce the likelihood of communication breakdowns and promote greater acceptance of and support for change initiatives. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their theoretical framework for micro-level perspectives on change.

Although failures to change have in the past been linked to poor communication efforts by change agents, less is known about how or why communication breakdowns occur from the perspective of change recipients. The framework teases out issues related to the “what”, ‘how”, and “why” aspects of communication and offers prescriptions on the best approaches to communicate change.

Despite the rise of multicultural workforces and a recognition of the role played by cultural values in influencing leadership practices across cultures, theories of change have neglected these elements. Effective change efforts not only help enable economic and social renewal, they also enable the well-being of employees. Additionally, many change initiatives in the modern era have social implications (e.g. enhancing sustainability, inclusion and diversity).

A key contribution is a synthesis of different bodies of literature that have developed separately from each other. The authors offer some nuanced and counter-intuitive insights into what makes communication effective during change and identify culturally sensitive communication as an antecedent of change readiness.

Although recent decades have seen increasing calls for fundamental change in the teaching of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (SEM), efforts to more broadly propagate proven innovations have met with only modest success despite (i) numerous national reports calling for changes, (ii) considerable funding that has been invested in SEM education improvements, and (iii) the growing body of literature on the superior efficacy of many curricular innovations. This chapter suggests that SEM innovators, while expert in their fields, may need to thoughtfully consider research and literature on change, both within higher education and including broader work on organizational change. From a review of the literature on change in higher education, two particular challenges are identified: goal ambiguity and narrow focus of change initiatives. To address these challenges, the authors offer a conceptual framework for decisions that SEM educational change agents make as they design and implement their change initiatives. Within this framework, they offer options and combinations of options that change agents might consider. Given the breadth and complexity of the literature and challenges of change, SEM educational change agents might consider forming collaborations to which they would contribute their disciplinary expertise in one of the three research communities. They might team with individuals who bring requisite expertise from other research communities or with respect to individual and organizational change. Such partnerships might develop approaches that would concurrently address multiple foci. Collaborations that included expertise in individual and organizational change would also be better prepared to navigate complexities of institutional change.

The colors of change is an overview of change paradigms, created about two decades ago, that has been intensively used, tested, refined, shared, and elaborated by practitioners and academics alike. Here, the “color theory” is presented as it is now, and is situated within the literature. Its four main applications are described as well as rules of thumb that have been derived from reflective practice. This chapter illustrates that the color theory is clearly not one thing to all people, as it is understood in very different ways, both in terms of its theoretical foundations as well as the complexity of its applications. This probably adds to the versatility of the theory. Bringing together key insights about the color theory for academics and practitioners, this chapter strives both to give a concise overview and to explore its richness.

Headquarters managers of a medium‐sized manufacturing company initiated a culture change in five of their dispersed wholesale units. The aim was for more external service quality. This paper aims to report the results of a test of three hypotheses, shedding light on the behavior of the involved agents. The hypotheses are rooted in the change management literature.

The present study rests both on quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interviews) field data collected in two discrete phases over 3.5 years and obtained from the operational employees. The authors use their quantitative survey data to examine agentic explanations for the failed change; their qualitative data corroborated the findings.

No culture change or service improvement was detected. Despite the fact that local change agents were not the initiators or owners of the intended change, employee satisfaction with the local change agents (situated in the service units) was found to explain variance in the culture and climate scores. The results underscore, furthermore, the critical importance of training employees, or lack thereof, in instituting the required new behavior.

Most change‐management research collects data from the managers' point of view. There are relatively few studies like this one that have been conducted from the perspective of those employees working in frontline service units. Meeting the challenge to improve external and internal service through culture change is crucial in many firms, for their survival and growth; accomplishing such organisational change (in which both culture and climate are positively affected) does indeed require experienced change‐management skills. Results of this study recommend the honing of the change‐management skill “coaching” for experienced managers, even though they themselves may not feel such a need.