How to Select Change Agents in Organizations? A Comparison of the Classical and Network Approaches

Abstract

The dynamic business environment forces companies to change and adapt constantly. The process can be organized with help of change agents. We develop a simple network approach to spreading information and delivering feedback in organizations. We suggest selecting employees with a role of change agents, focusing on the coverage they can obtain in the network – minimize the number of involved agents and maximize the size of their overall communication area. To explore and pre-verify the proposed approach, we compared and examined several network and classical methods of selection. Data includes networks of collaboration from three medium-sized companies. Agents selected according to network betweenness centrality obtained the best and significantly broader reach than agents selected as employees with high hierarchy levels. Moreover, selected change agents reach impressive coverage; even 5% of company employees engaged as agents may directly reach up to 70% of company staff, compared to 40% for agents selected randomly. A large coverage of a company organizational network can increase the success of change initiatives as vital for spreading reliable, first-hand information and feedback about implemented change. On the other hand, engaging only a limited number of influential employees in a company’s network should keep costs of implementing change relatively low.

Keywords

• change management
• change agents
• organizational network analysis
• network coverage