Most organizations of today are more or less influenced by the globalization. This phenomenon has led to that changes belong to the everyday concern of companies in order to be ahead of the competition. Simultaneously, when it comes to discussions about change failures and successes, it mainly is the top management standing in the spotlight. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to take a glance backstage of organizational changes while focusing on middle management. The purpose of this research is to examine how the middle manager can become a change agent and what contributions this new role can bring to the company. A glimpse on the historical evolution of the middle manager´s role and status helps to identify the underlying causes for the existing stereotype of this management group as well as the reasons for why middle management seems to belong to the ‘forgotten breed’ in organizations. Furthermore, the concept of changes and change management is outlined in order to clarify why changes fail and how those failures can be prevented with the help of a change agent. Based on this theoretical framework, the potential of middle managers acting as change agents is discussed. Additionally, due to the fact that the middle manager’s role as a change agent is not fully recognized yet, an own developed concept is outlined. This model is created as a result of empirical research in terms of interviews with consultants as well as extensive literature studies within this research area. The concept demonstrates how a middle manager can become a change agent and which contributions this new role can bring to the organization. Overall, it can be concluded from the research that it is time for organizations to recognize the potential of middle managers; they are the ones who can make changes happen.

The aim of this study is to examine the role of teacher as agent for change in the school environment after the provision of in-service teacher training. Ministry of Education provides in-service teacher training in collaboration with the International English Language Education Association (INGED- Turkish acronym- for short) in order to keep English language teachers up to date and adapt to the changing nature of the modern world. To what extent in-service teacher training enables teachers perform as leaders, whether they act as agents for change and more importantly whether teachers contribute to school improvement are the areas that this study conducts a research on. Qualitative research method was employed in this study. Data were collected through interviews in two phases in the city of &Ccedil / anakkale. Phase 1 took place during the Ministry of National Education in-service teacher training seminar, Phase 2 was after six months of the seminar. Sample in the first phase was v made up of 19 course participants, in the second phase the sample contained both 19 course participants and their 38 peers and 10 principals. Findings revealed that some teachers who work in a more democratic school environment were enabled with their change agentry roles as their principals created a flexible institutional culture. However, teachers who work in more rigid and centralized work environment were not given the freedom for applying the ideas that they were encouraged through in-service teacher training. This shows that on the one hand even one shot in-service teacher education contributes to teacher development in building change agents by raising teacher awareness on her subject knowledge and role but on the other hand to practice leadership and change agent role very much depends on the school culture.

This is an auto/ethnographic account of one organization and one person as we concurrently moved thru a process of IT driven planned organizational change. The purpose of the study is to explain how the change agent is affected by the experience of leading change. Using actor-network theory and a polyphonic approach, I present a multi-voiced, multi-actor account of the social network in situ and trace how the various actors engaged with one another during the organizational change process. I reflect upon my own multi-role performativity when acting in the role of the internal change agent next to my daily job roles and explore the effects on both me and the network; which identifies that a new actor network has been created. Finally, a multi-voiced exploration of myself is presented which traces my evolution from researcher to auto/ethnographer, further demonstrating the effects of multi-role performativity on the human actor. The study demonstrates that the effects of organizational change on both the social network and the actors within the network cannot be foreseen. Furthermore, in combining the use of Actor Network Theory and auto-ethnography, the study provides new insights into the effects of performance on the human actor within a socio-technical network, which is an unexplored dimension within the field of organizational change.

abstract: For some time it has been recognized amongst researchers that individual and collective change should be the goal in educating for sustainability, unfortunately education has generally been ineffective in developing pro-environmental behaviors among students. Still, many scholars and practitioners are counting on education to lead us towards sustainability but suggest that in order to do so we must transition away from current information-intensive education methods. In order to develop and test novel sustainability education techniques, this research integrates pedagogical methods with psychological knowledge to target well-established sustainable behaviors. Through integrating education, behavior change, and sustainability research, I aim to answer: How can we motivate sustainable behavioral change through education programs? More specifically: How do diverse knowledge domains (declarative, procedural, effectiveness, and social) influence sustainable behaviors, both in general as well as before and after a sustainability education program? And: What are barriers hindering education approaches to changing behaviors? In answering these questions, this research involved three distinct stages: (1) Developing a theoretical framework for educating for sustainability and transformative change; (2) Implementing a food and waste focused sustainability educational program with K-12 students and teachers while intensively assessing participants' change over the course of one year; (3) Developing and implementing an extensive survey that examines the quantitative relationships between diverse domains of knowledge and behavior among a large sample of K-12 educators. The results from the education program demonstrated that significant changes in knowledge and behaviors were achieved but social knowledge in terms of food was more resistant to change as compared to that of waste. The survey results demonstrated that K-12 educators have high levels of declarative (factual or technical) knowledge regarding anthropocentric impacts on the environment; however, declarative knowledge does not predict their participation in sustainable behaviors. Rather, procedural and social knowledge significantly influence participation in sustainable food behaviors, where as procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge impact participation in sustainable waste behaviors. Overall, the findings from this research imply that in order to effectively educate for sustainability, we must move away from nature-centric approaches that focus on declarative knowledge and embrace different domains of knowledge (procedural, effectiveness, and social) that emphasis the social implications of change. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Sustainability 2013

The main purpose of this thesis has been to study the change agent’s role in accelerating sustainability in the construction sector. A case study was conducted in a large construction company (~9000 employees) with an ambitious sustainability profile. The research started by obtaining an understanding of organizational change, the change agents’ role and how change agents can be organized. The research then proceeded by studying whether there are practices among change agents leading to sustainable transition and how. Data was collected in a single case study through semi- structured interviews with four change agents, their director and one receiver of the change efforts.  How do change agents in a construction company, organized in a dual operating system, overcome change resistance in the line organization to accelerate sustainability?  The answers to the research question where that the change agents are the key persons of driving the transformational change effort in the studied company. They operate differently depending on situation and task, with no formal job description, requiring a high grade of personal strive. They have no formal responsibilities and few recourses, resulting in an importance of ability to influence others to take necessary decisions to change towards sustainability. They focus on building and maintaining relations with key persons in the line organization and prefer to be involved early in the projects. They spend time to train and engage in sustainability questions. They use their colleagues and fellow experts in the parallel organization to share competence, expertise and experience.  This study shows that change agents’ working in a dual operating system has been implemented with success in Company X. A successful dual operating system should include a larger unit of agents that gives them support and help from each other in their strive for change in any area of choice. When implementing the dual operating system, it should be considered that if the role definition is wide, creativity is stimulated among the change agents, making them develop new methods for implementing sustainable change. Furthermore, these best practices identified could be used for future change agent role definitions.  Even though change resistance exists in different forms, proactive prevention of resistance as have been done in Company X, seems to facilitate the change effort. As a result, the interviewees did not particularly experience change resistance. For future research, the case study could be expanded to include more respondents to study each area deeper and be able to confirm the best practices and the main challenges. It would be of interest to identify a company in a different sector that has implemented change agents and a dual operating system and perform a similar case study to identify any sector-specific differences. Some interviewees at Company X described there was an ongoing process on the job descriptions of the change agents. After the implementation of the updated job descriptions, it could be of interest to study changes in volunteerism and creativity among the change agents. Another aspect for further studies would be company size. Smaller companies with less management recourses probably must operate different and those differences would be interesting to understand further. Lastly, future research could study outcome of change effort using change agents in a dual operating system compared to change agents in the original organization.

This is an auto/ethnographic account of one organization and one person as we concurrently moved thru a process of IT driven planned organizational change. The purpose of the study is to explain how the change agent is affected by the experience of leading change. Using actor-network theory and a polyphonic approach, I present a multi-voiced, multi-actor account of the social network in situ and trace how the various actors engaged with one another during the organizational change process. I reflect upon my own multi-role performativity when acting in the role of the internal change agent next to my daily job roles and explore the effects on both me and the network; which identifies that a new actor network has been created. Finally, a multi-voiced exploration of myself is presented which traces my evolution from researcher to auto/ethnographer, further demonstrating the effects of multi-role performativity on the human actor. The study demonstrates that the effects of organizational change on both the social network and the actors within the network cannot be foreseen. Furthermore, in combining the use of Actor Network Theory and auto-ethnography, the study provides new insights into the effects of performance on the human actor within a socio-technical network, which is an unexplored dimension within the field of organizational change.

The study aimed to develop the knowledge and provide a broader understanding of how management consultants (MC) manage strategic change, by examining their approach in relation to their function in strategic change processes. The literature review explored the function of MCs as change agents from four perspectives: standards setters, information sources, knowledge integrators, and knowledge brokers. Highlighting the client-consultant relationship as an aspect within their function. Additionally, the planned and emergent approach to change was presented. Based on the presented concepts, a conceptual framework was developed. A qualitative approach was taken where semi-structured interviews were conducted with MCs from different consulting firms to gather relevant data. Finally, the data was structured and thematically analyzed through our conceptual model.   There is no one-size-fits-all regarding managing strategic change. MCs focus on recognizing the unique context of each change process and client, implying that the MCs can function differently in different change processes. Furthermore, MCs approach strategic change processes in relation to their function as change agents by utilizing activities from both planned- and emergent activities, depending on the specific function they perceive they have.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore—from a managerial perspective—how IT-enabled change is designed, led, and sustained from-within an organisation. This is an issue of central concern because there is a considerable lack of research that directly incorporates IT in management and organisational change studies. In addition, earlier research has recurrently focused on abstract theorising, aggregated perspectives, and exploring organisational change from the outside, from-without. Consequently, the present body of research provides limited knowledge of how organisations in practice lead large-scale IT-enabled transformations. The thesis herein sets out to explore this question, and does so by following the change designers and agents of the telecommunications company Ericsson, that transformed its finance and accounting unit from a highly decentralised structure into a shared service centre structure (SSC) entitled: “The Global F&A Transformation Programme”. The formal transformation lasted three years, was enabled by an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and was driven in the majority of Ericsson’s sub-units situated in more than 140 countries. Theoretically, this thesis addresses the research question: how do actors and structures influence large-scale IT-enabled change? The principal finding of the thesis is a four-stage analytical framework built on the concepts of common ground, common meaning, common interest, and common behaviour: The Commonality Framework for IT-enabled Change. The value of the framework is that it depicts the interplay between actors and structures on a micro-level. In doing so, the framework explains the different levels of complexity in a transformation and how they require different structures to be used, different activities to be performed, different skills to be applied, and different roles to be played. The framework can be used by both academics and practitioners to develop, assess, and improve IT-enabled change projects. In a broader perspective, the findings further suggest that change comes about as an upward spiral, within which the moving targets of IT and organisation are intimately interconnected. This reciprocal interconnectedness between IT and organisation across time implies that if changes are done to technological properties, this necessitates changes to the organisational properties, and vice versa. Organisations at the hands-on-level more or less have to change to make use of the IT-enabled advantages. Thus, successful IT-enabled change is more than the technology artefact per se, and requires thoughtful attentiveness not only to the technological and material side, but also to the organisational, social and human side of change. The theoretical contribution of this thesis is the in-depth exposition of different aspects and interplays between the properties of actors and structures from-within the organisation. The empirical contribution is the description of how contemporary multinational organisations initiate, lead, and sustain large-scale IT-enabled change. / The provided document is only the summary and introductory chapter of the thesis (i.e. excluding the five papers). If you want more information about the thesis as a whole please contact the author einar.iveroth@fek.uu.se.

This qualitative master essay has taken place as a field study in the Sri Lankan post-war environment. The official peace started in 2009 and the country has had almost 30 years of war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government. The island is very segregated into clearly different ethnic and religious groups, which belonging has a big importance for the individuals. Very little contact takes place between the different groups and the prejudices between them have been built up for a long time and are hard to change. The focus in this research is the youth movement Sri Lanka Unites (SLU). Their vision is to bring youth together that are from different backgrounds and different geographical location in Sri Lanka. SLU does invite school prefects, evenly distributed from all over the island, to their annual Future Leaders Conference (FLC). There will possibilities be given to create friends from all over the country no matter background and through games and teamwork activities break down stereotypes about each other. When the FLC is over the prefects will go back to their school and starts create riffles on the water to their context regarding their new experience. In this study I have chosen to change the name prefects to change agents. The aim with this study is to gain understanding of the change agents’ experiences and attitudes regarding the reconciliation initiatives provided by Sri Lanka Unites including what the initiative mean for the change agents’ and their country’s future road to peace. The methodological approach has been ethnography and semi structured interview has been used as the method of data collection. Theories that have been applied are about culture, change process and attitude change. Earlier research has been focused on change agents, peace initiatives and attitude change. The major findings in this essay are that Sri Lanka Unites has a very big influence and do change a lot of the change agents’ attitudes. The change agents experience that they are a part of the solution on Sri Lanka´s road towards a peaceful country. Hence only time will tell how big the effects of the change agents and Sri Lanka Unites will have on the nations road to reconciliation. / Denna kvalitativa magisteruppsats har tagit plats i en efterkrigstid på Sri Lanka i form av en fältstudie. Den officiella freden deklarerades år 2009 och landet hade då haft nästan ett 30 år långt krig mellan de Tamilska Tigrarna (LTTE) och den Sri Lankesiska staten. Nationen är mycket segregerad i etniska och religiösa grupper vars tillhörighet har en stor betydelse för individen. Väldigt lite kontakt sker mellan de olika grupperna och fördomarna dem emellan har byggts upp under lång tid och är svåra att överbygga. Fokus i denna studie ligger på en ungdomsrörelse vid namn Sri Lanka Unites (SLU). Rörelsen har som vision att förena ungdomar från alla bakgrunder och geografiska platser på Sri Lanka. SLU bjuder in skolprefekter jämnt fördelat från hela Sri Lanka, till deras årliga event Future Leader Conference (FLC). Där ges möjlighet att skapa vänner från hela landet oavsett bakgrund och genom tävlingar och teamarbete bryta ned stereotyper om varandra. När FLC är slut åker skolprefekterna sedan tillbaka till deras skola för att ge ringar på vattnet till deras omgivning om deras nya erfarenheter. Dessa skolprefekter har jag i denna studie döpt om till förändringsagenter. Syftet med denna studie är att få förståelse för förändringsagenternas upplevelser och attityder rörande försoningsinitiativen som Sri Lanka Unites har initierat samt vad dessa initiativ betyder för förändringsagenterna och deras nation på deras framtida väg till fred. Den metodologiska ansatsen har varit etnografisk och semisstrukturerade intervjuer har använts som metod för datainsamling. Teorier som har applicerats i denna studie är framförallt om kultur, förändringsprocesser och attitydförändringar. Tidigare forskning har fokuserats på förändringsagenter, fredsinitiativ och attitydförändringar. De främsta slutsatserna i denna studie är att rörelsen Sri Lanka Unites har en mycket stor påverkan på och förändrar många av skolprefekternas attityder. Förändringsagenterna upplever att de är en del av lösningen på att Sri Lanka ska fortsätta och i framtiden vara ett fredligt land. Dock är tiden det som får utvisa hur stora effekter förändringsagenterna och Sri Lanka Unites har på nationens väg till försoning.

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