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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.

This paper aims to use Stones’ strong structuration theory (SST) that combines Giddens’ duality and Archer’s analytical dualism to deal with the paradox of embedded agency, focussing on resistance, in the budgeting literature. It also applies this framework to an illustrative case study that examines a failed attempt to implement performance-based budgeting (PBB) in the Egyptian Sales Tax Department (ESTD).

The authors have used SST as an analytical framework. Longitudinal case study data were collected from interviews, observations, discussions and documentary analysis and from publicly available reports and other media issued by the World Bank.

The SST framework identifies the circumstances in which middle managers as embedded agency have limited possibilities to change their dispositions to act and identify opportunities for emancipation in the wider social context in which they are embedded. The official explanation for the failure to implement PBB in Egypt was obstruction by middle managers. The findings of this study provide an alternative explanation to that published by the World Bank for the failure to institutionalise PBB in Egypt. It was found that the middle managers were the real supporters of PBB. Other parties and existing laws and regulations contributed to the failure of PBB.

As a practical implication of the study, the analysis presented here offers an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Egyptian project for monitoring and evaluation to that published by the World Bank. This case and similar cases may enhance the understanding of how and when monitoring and evaluation technologies should be introduced at the global level to manage conflicts of interest between agencies and beneficiaries.

This paper contributes to the extant management accounting literature on the use of ST in addressing the paradox of embedded agency in making or resisting structural change. It uses SST to integrate Giddens’ ST with critical realist theory, incorporating duality and dualism in a stronger model of structuration. The SST framework offers a means of analysing case studies that result from interactions and conjunctures between different groups of actors at different ontological levels. The paper also examines the issue of embedded agency in budgeting research using an illustrative case study from a developing country, Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what happens when a lack of role-sending results in ambiguous change agent roles during a large scale organisational reconfiguration. The authors consider the role of sensemaking in resolving role ambiguity of middle manager change agents and the consequences of this for organisational restructuring.

Data were collected from a case study analysis of significant organisational reconfiguration across a local National Health Service Trust in the UK. Data consists of 82 interviews, complemented by analysis of over 100 documents and field notes from 51 hours of observations collected over five phases covering a three year period before, during and after the reconfiguration. An inductive qualitative analysis revealed the sensemaking processes by which ambiguity in role definition was resolved.

The data explains how change agents collectively make sense of a role in their own way, drawing on their own experiences and views as well as cues from other organisational members. The authors also identified the organisational outcomes which resulted from this freedom in sensemaking. This study demonstrates that by leaving too much flexibility in the definition of the role, agents developed their own sensemaking which was subsequently very difficult to manipulate.

In creating new roles, management first needs to have a realistic vision of the task and roles that their agents will perform, and second, to communicate these expectations to both those responsible for recruiting these roles and to the agents themselves.

Much of the focus in sensemaking research has been on the importance of change agents’ sensemaking of the change but there has been little focus on how change agents sensemake their own role in the change.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on top women managers who act as change agents in the machista culture of Mexico. Specifically, the authors centre the attention not only on the strategies performed by these change agents to reduce inequality, but also on understanding the way in which they discursively reproduce or challenge essentialist notions of gender with respect to the cultural and organizational context.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 top women managers in Mexico who are actively involved as change agents. A feminist poststructuralist methodological framework using critical discourse analysis was used to uncover competing notions of gender and related strategies developed to promote gender equality.

The analysis reveals that the 12 change agents perform strategies for inclusion, and only half of them engage in strategies for re-evaluation. The authors were unable to recognize whether these change agents are engaged in strategies of transformation. These change agents also reproduce and challenge “essentialist” notions of gender. In some instances – based on their own career experiences and gendered identities – they (un)consciously have adopted essentialism to fit into the cultural context of machista society. They also challenge the gender binary to eradicate essentialist notions of gender that created gender inequalities in the first place.

The experience of these 12 top women managers may not represent the voice of other women and their careers. Ultimately, intersections with class, organizational level, nationality, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation must be taken into account so to represent other women’s particular interests with respect to equality.

For those researchers-consultants who may be involved in an intervention strategy, it is important to focus on helping the change agents in reviewing and reflecting on their own “vision of gender equity”. During the strategic activities of mentoring and training, these change agents could potentially “leak” a particular “vision of gender” to other women and men. Thus, part of the intervention strategy should target the change agent’s self-reflection to influence her capacity to act as change agents.

The authors contribute to the literature on change agents and interventions for gender equality. Intervention strategies usually centre on essentialist notions of gender. The study offers potential explanations for this approach by paying attention to the process of how change agents, in their efforts to promote gender equality, may be unconsciously projecting their own identities onto others and/or consciously engaging in strategic essentialism to fit into the machista context of Mexico.

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.

This paper seeks to improve the understanding of implementation processes that achieve corporate sustainability by providing explanatory knowledge about the role of change agents from a sensemaking perspective. The paper also aims to focus on the sustainability efforts of change agents in a multinational carpet tile manufacturer.

The theoretical perspective of the paper is based on the concepts of sensemaking and emergent change. The paper examines sustainability sensemaking in the Dutch subsidiary of the US‐based carpet tile manufacturer Interface over a period of ten years (2000‐2010).

The findings show that embedding sustainability by change agents is typically an emergent change process that consists of small steps and is not predictable.

This paper focuses on the emergent, unpredictable aspects of change. More research is needed on processes of adapting the general concept of sustainability to local organisational contexts.

The paper examines sustainability sensemaking by change agents in one organisation.

Change agents are individuals who can successfully transform aspects of how organisations operate. In education, teachers as change agents are increasingly seen as vital to the successful operation of schools and self-improving school systems. To date, however, there has been no systematic investigation of the nature and role of teacher change agents. To address this knowledge gap, we undertook a systematic review into five key areas regarding teachers as change agents. After reviewing 70 outputs we found that current literature predominantly positions teacher change agents as the deliverers of top-down change, with the possibility of bottom-up educational reform currently neglected.

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 purpose of this paper is to suggest a strong structuration-based framework for the study of management accounting change.

A retrospective field study was designed to investigate the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on budgeting and control practices of Greek hospitality organisations. Conduct analysis addresses agents’ perceptions of the changes upon themselves. Context analysis explores the changing context, and how the agents modified their in-situ control structures accordingly. The framework is demonstrated through one case study.

The agents in the case, triggered by the crisis, gradually come to criticise the way they practice budgeting. The first response is to practice budgeting more normatively, but later they criticise and modify these norms. As their formal mentalities co-mediated action, variance management became proactive rather than reactive. Variations in the ways agents draw upon structures – unreflectively or critically – and on how they act to reproduce structures – routinely or strategically – characterise change in management accounting practice. Agents’ reasoning and conduct leading to action is local, and these local changes in conduct and context are significant in understanding management accounting change.

This framework for studying management accounting change balances structural conditions of action, with action and interaction. It can be used to study how, why, and by whom institutionalised management accounting practices may change.

Purpose: In this chapter we examine the emotional experience and identity of sustainability change agents and advance understanding of their emotion management strategies. We explore how sustainability change agents experience, manage, and respond to the negative emotions that arise in the course of their jobs. Study Design: We took a mixed-method and multimodal approach to answer our research questions. Using a narrative approach, we collected data using in-depth narrative interviews and supplemented this with quantitative measurement of participants' heart rate and sweat response during the interviews. Findings: Our results confirm that sustainability change agency is an emotionally laden profession. Furthermore, we found that sustainability change agents use three different coping mechanisms including emotion-focused coping (EFC) (“rational avoiders”), problem-focused coping (PFC) (“committed go-getters”), and meaning-focused coping (MFC) (“green philosophers”). Originality: Our research shows that sustainability change agents experienced strong negative emotions in relation to their jobs and they employed one of the three coping styles: EFC, PFC, or MFC. We found that MFC was an isolated cognitive appraisal style, rather than a form of EFC. These findings provide a starting point for further work to help sustainability change agents avoid potential burnout and continue to contribute to the future health of the planet while at the same time maintain their personal well-being.