Merging, Downsizing and Reengineering: The Change Agent

Organizational change is a fact of corporate life. Organizations have to adapt continually to new markets, competition and other external factors. Barely a day goes by when we do not hear of a high-profi le merger, downsizing decisions or other business process re- engineering programs. As change is a major element of corporate life, having proved oneself to be an effective change agent is an important tick in the box on the way to the top. Kotter uses organizational change as a differentiator between managers and leaders.1 Managers deal with organizational complexity, whereas leaders prepare organizations for change and help them to deal with it. Organizational change is a summary term that includes different types of transformations an organization may undergo in response to internal and external pressures. The examples the interviewees described map broadly on to the three levels of organizational change described by Lawson and Price.2 The first level of changes they describe are changes involving direct actions, such as divesting certain parts of the company in order to focus on core elements. This type of change does not require employees to change the way they work. But it has a profound impact on those who work in the parts of the company that are about to be stripped away. One interviewee, for example, described how she led the integration process after the purchase of a new business.