"Change Agents"- Their Roles and Influnces in Organizations

Abstract

The role and significance of " change agents" in organizations has become a subject of interest over the last decades. During the 1980s, the "change master" and "transformational leadership" literature presented leaders as charismatic heroes of radical corporate transformation that required destroying rigid and inflexible structures (Kanter 1983; Devanna and Tichy 1986; Bass 1990). Various extraordinary qualities, traits and attributes were associated with these change champions, including risk taking, and openness to new ideas. Unfortunately, this positive assertion of leadership was often conceived alongside the negative counter-image of traditional managerial roles (Caldwell 2003) played by them. This paper is going to focus on the role of the change agents and influence they have over the people and organizations.