How do middle managers act as change agents? Analysis of an organizational change agent network

Abstract

Managing strategic change is a challenge, especially in the large multinational companies that dominate the business arena of today. Utilizing and leveraging the middle management can be an effective way to facilitate strategy implementation and thus manage strategic change initiatives.

This study investigates the role of middle managers as change agents in strategic change and seeks to investigate their role in the strategic change process. In addition, the aspects potentially hindering and on the other hand facilitating the work of these change agents is also explored in this study.

This research is as a case study on a network of change agents at Nokia Corporation. Thus, the context of this study is a network of change agents – the Nokia Change Management Network within the Operations-function. The individuals of this network, called change managers, are industry specialists working partly with change management within their organizational units, in which they are responsible for making change happen.

The role of these change agents was reflected on strategic management literature, especially from a strategy practice perspective, and also on the research conducted on the middle manager role in strategizing. The empirical part of this study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 18 of these change managers in the research context.

The strategic role of the change managers was in accordance with the roles mapped out in the strategic management literature: they synthesize information from various sides of the organization and raise topics upwards in the organization. They also promote, communicate and implement change downward towards the operational levels of the organization. In addition to these tasks, change managers must personally understand the change and assist others in strategic sensemaking.

The challenges change managers experienced were related to time and resource pressure, the interconnections between strategy and change and the virtual working environment. On the other hand, the Change Management Network was seen as a significant facilitator for change managers in their work with change. Additionally, the proactive and reflexive way change managers evaluated their own work was found to be a substantial change facilitator. Therefore, utilizing middle managers in strategic change implementation provides these change agents a broad variety of challenging tasks, which can be facilitated by a network of practitioners.