Initiating divergent organizational change
Subtitle: the enabling role of actors' social position
By: Julie Battilana
Contributors: Harvard Business School. Division of Research
Series: Working paper / Division of Research, Harvard Business School -- 07-053; Working paper (Harvard Business School. Division of Research) -- 07-053
Publisher: Division of Research, Harvard Business School
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 64
Description: This study addresses the paradox of embedded human agency, or the contradiction between actors' agency and institutional determinism. It helps to resolve this paradox by considering the enabling role of actors' social position. Adopting a relational view of human agency, I model the impact of their social position on the likelihood that actors will initiate changes that diverge from the existing institutions. I test this model using data from 93 change projects conducted by clinical managers at the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. My findings suggest that social position is an important enabling condition for divergent organizational change, and is a determinant as well of the type of divergent organizational change an actor may undertake.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.