Researching the Roles of Internal‐change Agents in the Management of Organizational Change
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00040 |
| Author | Peter Binns,John Benington,Jean Hartley |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
Introduction
There have been increasingly rapid changes in
both the external and the internal environments
of many organizations – in both private, public
and voluntary sectors – over the past few years,
and these have encouraged renewed interest in
the planning and management of change. This has
led in turn to a greater recognition of the need
to mobilize programmes and processes of organ-
izational and cultural change, and of the role of
change agents.
The recognition that organizational change
can no longer be conceived as a one-off event, or
a temporary adjustment, but must be seen as a
continuous process of adaptation to flux in the en-
vironment, has encouraged an explosion of both
academic and management literature charting the
importance of organizational learning processes
as key assets for long-term success (e.g. Garratt,
1990; Kanter, 1990; Quinn-Mills and Friesen,
1992; Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne, 1991; Senge,
1992). Organizational learning requires, among
other features, the development and dissemina-
tion of personal learning about the management
of organizational change. In this respect, internal
change agents may be important assets for any
organization, whether in the private, public or
voluntary sectors.
This paper focuses on the perceptions, roles
and learning needs of internal-change agents in
elected local authorities. Changes in the external
environment of local authorities and other UK
public-service organizations have been no less
profound than those experienced by the private
sector (Benington and Stoker, 1989; Leach,
Stewart and Walsh, 1994). Research has high-
lighted the scale and the scope of the economic,
social and political changes facing the welfare state
and the public-service sector in the UK, including
British Journal of Management, Vol. 8, 61–73 (1997)
Researching the Roles of Internal-change
Agents in the Management of
Organizational Change
Jean Hartley, John Benington and Peter Binns
Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
There has been relatively little empirical research on the roles played by internal-
change agents in the processes of developing and managing organizational and cultural
change, or on their learning needs. There is a particular dearth of research on these
issues in the public-service sector. This paper discusses an innovative methodology for
studying the work of internal-change agents within local government. It describes an
action-research project, the learning laboratory, which the authors piloted with a small
group of senior managers involved in developing programmes of corporate organ-
izational and/or cultural change in their own local authorities. Using a variety of action-
research and action-learning techniques within the laboratory, together with before
and after interviews with the participants and their line managers in their authorities,
the project was able to explore the roles, perceptions and learning needs of these
internal-change agents. The research makes a contribution to the study of internal-
change agents in their organizational context, and draws attention in particular to the
implications for change agents of the political context of public-service organizations.
The value of the learning-laboratory methodology for assessing the learning needs of
internal-change agents is also assessed.
© 1997 British Academy of Management
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