Agency and Change: Rethinking Change Agency in Organizations

by Raymond Caldwell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415326773
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/17/2005
Series:	Routledge Studies in Organizational Change & Development
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Raymond Caldwell is Reader in Organizational Change at Birkbeck College, University of London. His research interests include organizational change theories, change agency and leadership, and the role of the HR function in the management of change.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. The Rise of the Change Agent 3. Change Leaders 4. The Manager as Change Agent 5. Management Consultants as Change Agents 6. The Emergence of Change Teams 7. The Learning Organization and Change Agency 8. Four Models of Change Agency 9. The Future of Change Agency 10. Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

'Agency and Change remains an important critical analysis of organizational change theory as it faces up to new, complex organizational realities.' - Robert Wapshott for Work, Employment and Society

From the Publisher