Getting involved in change: Enabling distributed change agency through organizational control and trust

Abstract: This doctoral thesis focuses on distributed change agency for managing change in organizations. Distributed change agency enables organizational members to make the choice to engage in change and act to realize it. The accelerating pace and complexity of organizational change increases the need for distributed change agency – more organizational members need to be involved to realize change. In this dissertation, the change in focus relies on practices of involvement where larger circles of organizational members are part of the change. Not enough is known about distributed change agency and how it can be managed. In this dissertation, organizational control and trust are explored to learn more about how the development of change agency can be supported. Both aspects are found to play a role for how organizations can enable the development of distributed change agency. The method of organizational control is of less importance for supporting distributed change agency. However, it needs to make sense to organizational members for them to be supported by it. Thus, there needs to be alignment between control methods, personal, and organizational goals. In order to dare to act and possibly take a risk there needs to be trust present in the organization, trust in both colleagues and organization and in the change per se. I suggest that control and trust can be seen as catalysts with which the organization can enable the development of change agency and manage change agency. Furthermore, practices of involvement are found to be ways an organization can distribute and mange change agency. In this dissertation, I contribute theoretically by adding to our knowledge about distributed change agency. I also add to research on managing change by suggesting how organizations can manage change agency. Furthermore, I add to the view and tradition of driving change with a greater number of organizational members involved. The dissertation is based on four papers looking at reactions and practices during changes characterized by involvement and by the implementation of something new – in terms of new ways of working and collaborating around new products or strategy. Two of the papers are based on action research studies and two of the papers are based on multi-case studies.