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A survey questionnaire was designed and distributed to samples of internal and external change agents which measured the extent to which they professed values traditionally associated with the field of OD. The survey also included questions concerning the types of interventions utilised in the change programmes that respondents had been associated with in the previous five years as well as how these programmes had been evaluated. As predicted, external change agents were more likely to profess traditional OD values and to be associated with change programmes which included human processual interventions. Contrary to expectations, internal change agents were less likely than external change agents to be associated with the utilisation of technostructural interventions. Support was also generated for the prediction that internal change agents are more likely to carry out extensive programme evaluations.

In the context of organizational change, identifying, and organizing the various roles of change agents remains a challenge for practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter examines how different agents can enable an effective change process. Empirical evidence from three hospitals illustrates the process of transformation and its underlying arrangements to identify agents and their roles. The findings underline the importance of designing a coherent system of agents, determining where they come from, their role during the process, and how this may change throughout the change process. Managerial choices in the cases are discussed, leading to implications for theory and practice.

This paper reconceptualizes resistance as a stimulant of organizational learning from a change agent's perspective. Adopting a social constructivism lens, the paper argues that employee resistance has the capacity to trigger individual, group and organizational learning. It explores the “how” question—how can employee resistance be transformed into organizational learning?

This study utilizes the qualitative research method of auto-ethnography. Sensemaking auto-ethnographic narrative accounts of two change agents, internal and external is used to synchronize resistance and learning as well as reflect on the positive impact of organizational change.

Rather than, suppressing resistance as a dysfunctional aspect of the change process, becoming aware and making sense of this “misconstrued barrier” to learning and change can transform it into an appropriate feedback mechanism to initiate organizational learning.

This paper emphasizes the role of change agents in the change process and how their understanding of the culture, change recipients, organizational climate and work environment could increase the success of transforming resistance into learning. Collaboration through social interaction, communication, participation and awareness creation are utilized as effective mechanisms to develop a learning environment.

This research was carried out within an academic setting in a challenging context where not much is known about change initiatives and resistance at a university level.

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.

Working to bring about Planned System Change is a difficult task in large organizations, regardless of the change agents' levels of skill. To bring about the change from the inside, as an internal change agent, increases the difficulty of the task considerably. The effort which we will detail below is further complicated by the nature and scope of the project undertaken. That is, developing a sustained capacity for change within a large governmental public service organization. It is important that the reader recognize that the Michigan Department of Mental Health is a rather typical US governmental agency. Many of the usual images of governmental bureaucracy, red‐tape, entrenched bureaucrats, limited funding, conflicting political influences and pockets of bright, enthusiastic staff are all accurate descriptors of the Department of Mental Health.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how internal-driven management innovation (IDMI) takes shape, which highlights the objective-oriented and problem-oriented property of the innovation.

Based on a case study of a new practice called 11X integration strategy in Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited, a Chinese pharmaceutical group in Guangdong province, through applying Grounded Theory the authors get a concise systematic framework of generation process that is more practical and more understandable than the counterparts in current literature.

First, this paper uncovers five stages and two parallel sub processes in the generation process of IDMI. The sub processes involves practical exploration process (i.e. primary activities) carried out by the internal change agents and theoretical support process (i.e. support activities) carried out by the external change agents. Second, by adopting a process perspective the authors are able to demonstrate how the different activities in both types of processes are combined over time in an intertwined way.

First, the case the authors studied is embedded in the context of China’s transitional economy, and the single case study limits us to make comparisons of the generation process of management innovation between different market economies. Second, the external-driven management innovation is still a field untouched. Third, in the research the authors explore the issues of how new management innovation is generated and implemented, but the authors do not systematically research on why different companies exhibit different levels of management innovativeness.

First, the findings suggest that firms should consciously and systematically invest in IDMI to create sustainable competitive advantage. Second, the process framework provides a clear guidance to the managers in Chinese state-owned enterprises who are engaged in developing or adopting management innovation. Third, the study indicates the managers in Chinese company should be aware of the importance of external change agents to IDMI. Fourth, this study could facilitate the enterprises to develop or adopt management innovation based on their real needs rather than just “jumping on the bandwagon” when adopting certain new management skills.

This study offers a new generation framework by identifying possible facilitators of IDMI that does not yet exist in extant literatures, and the two sub processes – the practical exploration process and the theoretical support process – deepen the understanding of the generation mechanisms of IDMI. Furthermore, the study contributes to reaching a better understanding of management innovation in the context of transitional economy such as China.

This paper aims to explore the adoption of cashless, card‐based gaming machine payment systems from the organisational perspective, with an emphasis on the role of employees as change agents.

In a qualitative research approach, semi‐structured interviews with 14 registered club employees or change agents form the basis of analysis.

A typology of change agent involvement in the successful customer adoption of payment innovations is proposed. Agents' capacity to recognise and respond to customer needs is the first theme identified and discussed. An ability to reflect on the effect of customer adoption of cashless mechanisms on their role and responsibilities constitutes the second skill, and their perception of the consequences of use for the organisation and its customers represents the highest order change agent skill in the adoption process.

The exploratory nature of this qualitative study limits the generalisability of the findings to gaming machine venues that share similar contextual features.

The club employees interviewed are found to be potentially effective agents of change who readily observe and respond to the needs of gambling customers and can relate these to specific operational impacts. Opportunities for genuine employee participation in the diffusion process beyond the communication and adoption stages would, it is concluded, improve outcomes in the rate of adoption, range of customer use and the process of product development and enhancement.

This paper applies a typology of change agent roles in a service industry context, acknowledging the unique relationship that club employees have with customers. It highlights how this can be leveraged to improve new product development and customer adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of management innovations.

The authors apply a multiple-case (embedded) design, with each organization representing a case, which entails a few embedded units of analysis. Case studies are about the base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) initiatives, during which all organizations are interested in management innovations which support them in coming up with and implementing between two and four new management practices.

The findings suggest four types of management innovations: efficiency-driven, externally recommended, problem-oriented, and opportunity-oriented management innovation.

This paper explores and analyses management innovations, rather than testing them. As with most qualitative research, the transferability of the findings is limited.

Managers should vigorously pursue management innovations, not only in BoP markets, but also in all markets. Practitioners must, however, ensure that they are not fully absorbed by a single type of management innovation, and recognize the importance of pursing multiple ones.

For academics, the authors revitalize the concept of engaged scholarship.

Surprisingly, previous research looks either into generic or specific management innovations. The typology is original, since the typology offers a more fine-grained view on management innovations.

The vital importance of change management in today's competitive climate has been widely investigated. While the need for successful change management is intensively proclaimed by “expert” consultants, the response for some time has been regarded as falling short of what is required. The heavy emphasis in the literature on a rational‐linear approach to understanding organisational change overlooks the significance of the cultural and political dimensions of organisational life. This article highlights a systemic‐multivariate view of change by investigating internal change agents’, that is managers’, accounts of the barriers to change management. It addresses the limitations of change management by attending to the perceptions of managers, that is those actors who generally determine organisational priorities and make crucial resource allocation decisions. This article illustrates the systemic line of thinking adopted by managers undergoing major restructuring efforts in their organisations. This line of thinking is shown to differ from the espoused values of managers that constitute the rational‐linear view of change management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, describe and evaluate the different ways in which formal collective change agency is structured in specialist units inside 25 diverse organisations. As such it is oriented towards a range of practitioners operating in HR, project management or with responsibility for delivering change in public and private sectors.

Using a qualitative design, exploratory interview and case study research was conducted in organisations across the UK public and private sectors to explore how different change agency units operate within organisational structures.

Four dominant types of internal change agency unit are identified, varying in terms of their change impact scope and degree of structural embeddedness in the organisation. These units are described as transformers, enforcers, specialists and independents and share key concerns with securing client credibility and added value, effective relationship management and the use of consulting tools. Their roles and the tensions they experience are outlined along with hybrid forms and dynamic shifts from one type to another.

The study could be extended outside of the UK and conducted longitudinally to help identify outcomes more precisely in relation to context.

Each of the four types of change agency unit identified is shown to be suited to certain conditions and to present particular challenges for collective change agency and for specialist management occupations engaged in such work. The analysis could usefully inform organisation design decisions around internal change agency.

The authors extend debates around the nature of internal change agency which has typically focussed on comparisons with external change agents at the level of the individual. Developing the work of Caldwell (2003), the authors reveal how emergent, team-based or collective approaches to change agency can be formalised, rather than informal, and that structural considerations of change need to be considered along with traditional concerns with change management.