Agency and Change: Rethinking Change Agency in Organizations

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Routlege, 2006 - 185 Seiten
The first to define the subject of change agency, this excellent book remaps its limits and possibilities, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective, critical and synthetic 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. The discourses are classified into: rationalist - focusing on intentional agency, expert knowledge and the management of organizational change contextualist - examining emergent change and the bounded nature of strategic choice dispersalist - discussing the growing challenges of organisational complexity, learning processes in organizations, sense-making agency and 'communities of practice' constructionist - exploring the limits of human agency as discourse while affirming new possibilities for change and transformation. 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.

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Autoren-Profil (2006)

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.

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