Description
In management, a review, analysis, and synthesis of past definitions and usages of the foresight concept into a generic definition, in order to make the concept measurable has classified foresight as a behaviour
Research Study in Management of Change: Bringing In Relationality, Situations and Foresight
Introduction There is an overwhelming preoccupation in the management literature with predicting the future and capitalizing on the opportunities that such a vision may ofer. This is due to a recognition of the primacy of foresight in economic development (Harper and Georghiou, 2005) Decades of unprecedented growth of the literatures on foresight (Costanzo, 2004; Tsoukas and Shepherd, 2004), forecasting (Chuls, 2003) and intuition (Simon, 1987; Agor, 1986) in management is indicative of this preoccupation. However, we contend that this very literature is littered with conceptions of foresight which do not attend to interplay of foresight and change agency. Indeed, foresight is often considered as an organizational and strategic issue, rather than a phenomenon which essentially resides at the level of the individual, as an essential part of individual agency. We focus on foresight as an aspect of change agency in the management of change literature and explore: (i) what deems framing of change agency weak in the management of change literature and (ii) whether it is possible to address inadequacies of the change agency lit- erature through reframing of foresight. Finally, we call for a framework which captures the multidimensional nature of change agency, and which refers to change agency in contextual, relational and temporal terms. Agency is a central theme in change management scholarship. However, we demonstrate in this chapter that change management literature's portrayal of agency does not do justice to the complexity of the concept. We try to disentangle the concept of agency by exposing the problems with its current treatment in the change management literature and question whether it is possible to reframe agency in a way true to its nature. In order to achieve this, we refashion agency with relational, situated and foresight dimensions and explore fore- sight as an essential, but yet severely underplayed, component of change agency. Therefore, the chapter makes a theoretical contribution to the field of organizational change, by bring- ing contextual and relational insights into micro-level strategy making. The chapter is organized as follows. First, we define agency, drawing on sociological literature. Next, we critique the models of agency in the process of organizational change. Third, we introduce foresight as a central concern of organizational change process. The final section concludes. Defining agency 'Agency' is an ephemeral concept which often evades definition. Eforts to define and frame agency have engaged scholars from all disciplines of social sciences. However, the disciplinary polarization has meant that agency is often conceptualized either from explicitly individualized or from highly context-dependent perspectives. Nevertheless, increased attention to structure, agency and action debates in the social sciences has 249
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recently yielded the emergence of broadly syncretic conceptions of agency. For example, in their authoritative paper titled, 'What is agency?', Emirbayer and Mische (1998: 970) define agency as: 'the temporally constructed engagement by actors of diferent structural environments - the temporal relational contexts of action - which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations'. Emirbayer and Mische's definition of agency sets it in a social interaction, structural environment, temporal relational context, in which action is both situated and crea- tive. This definition provides an ideal measure against which we assess the treatment of agency in the change management literature. In the next section, we examine the models of change agency and re?ect on the problems in their theorization. What is wrong with the models of agency in the change management literature? The survey of the change management literature reveals an overfragmented research area crowded with various disconnected works, each piece focusing on a specific aspect of the phenomenon without articulating it in the totality of the subject or situating it in a wider theoretical framework of change agency. In addition to the lack of theoretical rigor, the works in the field also sufer from a lack of empirical grounding. As noted by Huy (2001), most of the works are examples of predominantly prescriptive models of change agents established on scientifically vulnerable theoretical and empirical bases. In addition to this general ?aw in the literature, there are four other problematic areas: (i ) a rational, autonomous and individualistic conceptualization of change agency, (ii) an acontextual and disembodied focus on change agents' competencies and traits, (iii) a lack of consideration for power dynamics in the change process and (iv) an inattention to the link between change agency and foresight, the issue which this chapter explores further. Change agents as rational and autonomous individuals First, there are several competing models of change agency that treat the concept as an individualized phenomenon. Until the 1980s, the work on change agency was confined to organizational development (OD) research inspired by the works of Lewin (1951). Within the OD tradition, the conception of change was that of a linear and rational process of planned change in relatively stable organizations, and understanding of the role of change agent was that of unbiased external or internal consultant as facilitator armed with counseling, consensus building, listening and coaching skills (Beckhard, 1969; Tichy, 1974). These rationalized and individualized understandings of the change process and change agency were later identified as main weaknesses of the OD perspective (Dawson, 1994, 2003; Caldwell, 2003). Another strand in the literature that presents such a linear process of change focuses on the tempo of change for understanding change agency. Weick and Quinn (1999: 375) define two types of change corresponding to diferent tempos of the process: episodic or radical change, which is discontinuous and intermittent; and continuous change, which is incremental and evolving. Drawing on that typology of organizational change, change agents are associated with diferent types of roles and competencies. In episodic change, change agents assume a proactive role as 'prime movers' in the process which is governed by the 'logic of replacement' (ibid.: 375). On the other hand, the basis of continuous change is described with reference to the 'logic of attraction' and the role of the change
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Agency in management of change 251 agent is that of a facilitator where she or he acts as a 'sense-maker'(ibid.: 380). These two distinct logics, which epitomize change agents' roles and strategies, correspond to two diferent types of leadership conceptualized by Bass (1995, cited in Munduate and Gravenhorst, 2003: 4); transactional (logic of replacement) and transformational (logic of attraction). The common vulnerability of these contributions is their tendency to analyze the strategies and activities of change agents as linear processes which are coor- dinated by autonomous individuals, who act on their rational calculations, drawing on 'perfect' information on organizational resources for change. Indeed, this approach is insufciently detailed to capture the reality of organizational processes of change, which is characterized by layers of negotiated and politicized forms of access to resources. Change agents as a-contextual and disembodied actors Our second concern is over decontextualized and disembodied understanding of change agency in the literature. In the 1980s, associated with the rhetoric of the ?exible, com- petitive and innovative organization (Atkinson, 1985; Volberda, 1998), a new stream of literature, which is fed by leadership research and which primarily focuses on the role of senior managers and organizational leaders throughout the change process, has begun to grow outside of the OD tradition (Kanter, 1984, 1999). In this literature, the role and skills of change agents, such as personal drive, energy, courage and vision, the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, cognitive ability, self-confidence and knowledge of business, ?exibility and risk taking, have become almost identical with those of efective leaders (Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991; Dulewicz and Herbert, 2000). Due to its reliance on a single individual as the focus of the change process, that is, the extraordinary qualities of a charismatic leader, this approach was criticized by many change agency scholars (Nadler and Tushman, 1990; Caldwell, 2003). Posing a challenge to the 'change leader' approach, the 'contingency perspective' claims that there is not a universal, standard formula for change agency; rather it is contingent upon business and organizational environment (Dunphy and Stace, 1993: 905). Nadler and Tushman (1990) argued that there is not a single type of organizational change and an associated style of leadership. They proposed a typology of four diferent change types based on the pace of and motivation for change, each requiring diferent types of leadership styles. Ironically, although the contingency perspective is based upon a critique of the 'charismatic leader' approach, it is also centered on the idea of the individual leader as the focal point of the organizational change process (Westley and Mintzberg, 1989). However, in both 'change leader' and 'contingency' perspectives, change agents are ontologically situated as disembodied and a-contextual individuals. Correspondingly, the level of exploration of change agency is overwhelmingly reduced to that of individual psychology. Caldwell (2003: 132), in his critical review of change agent literature, asserts that the inclination to associate change agents with extraordinary qualities, traits and attributes, endures in diferent models of change agency. This ontological attribution leads to the omission of contextual analysis of change and excessive focus on change agents' competency and traits, which essentially results in in?ation of prescriptions regarding the necessary competencies for change agents and recipes for success. Consequently, the change agency literature is packed with a series of presumably universal lists of competencies and skills required by change agents. Some lists include skills in specific areas such as forecasting, anticipating, counseling, consensus building, listening, coaching and facilitating (for
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example, Beckhard, 1969; Bass, 1995; Weick and Quinn, 1999) or more professional competencies such as being trained in work process analysis, process consultancy or organizational development training (for example, Tichy, 1974; Huy, 2001). Elsewhere, personal traits such as the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, cognitive ability, problem solving, selfconfidence, expertise, information and ?exibility and risk taking are also included in these lists (for example, Kanter, 1984, 1999; Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991; Buchanan and Boddy, 1992; Dulewicz and Herbert, 2000; Munduate and Gravenhorst, 2003). Other lists (for example, Buchanan and Boddy, 1992; Muir, 1996; Huy, 2001) include interpersonal skills such as team building, negotiation, authority, efective communication, building trust, being sympathetic, and competency in interpersonal inquiry. Hence, most of the works attempt to present blueprint models of change agency in the form of advice and guidelines. Although these may be considered useful from the practitioners' point of view as they specify possible individual strategies that may be employed by the change agents, they add up to an unsatisfactory attempt at scientific inquiry due to the lack of a robust multilayered analysis of the conditions in which change agency takes place. Failure to recognize power dynamics in the change process Third, although some models of change agency seek to contextualize the role of change agents within the organizational framework, these works overlook the power dynamics involved in the change process. An example of this is the model of change agency which is proposed by Huy (2001). Focusing on the planned change process, he constructs a model exploring two dimensions of organizational change: time and content. Four ideal types of intervention that come out of the time-content matrix of change are commanding, engineering, teaching and socializing, each corresponding to a change in diferent spheres of organization, that is in formal structures, work processes, beliefs and social relationships, respectively (ibid.: 604). Accordingly, Huy (p. 604) argues that corresponding to these four ideal types, change agents will be diferent organizational actors in each intervention: namely, the people from the higher echelons of organizations assisted by external consultants will be change agents in the commanding type of interventions. The professional task analysts will be change agents in the engineering type. The process consultants and psychoanalysts will act as change agents in the teaching type. Finally, the organizational members themselves will adopt change agent roles in the socializing type. Huy's model of ideal types furthers the debate on the role of change agents by pointing out the various personal competencies and styles of leadership required for intervening in diferent aspects of organization. However, the model still shares the mainstream change agency tradition's myopic tendency to limit the study of the subject to the construction of 'ideal types' and assignment of some trait and competency requirements to change agents. Another work on change agency that deserves to be mentioned in this context is Muir's 'system readiness approach' (1996: 478). Here, the author attempts to situate the change process in the external macro-environmental situation and internal organiza- tional context such as formal and informal networks and procedures, as well as pointing to the importance of assessing the impact of diferent ranks of organization on the process. Muir's work presents a valuable contribution by including external and internal contextual factors as the factors afecting the success of change process. However, after the discussion of the contextual nature of change, change agents are again depicted as a-political individuals with some skill and ability requirements.
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Agency in management of change 253 Alternatively, Munduate and Gravenhorst (2003) draw a model for exploring the power bases of change agents within the organizational change process which is based on a dual typology of episodic and continuous change. Focusing on the continuous change process and relying on the social psychology tradition, they note that the individuals who are targeted through change programs display three possible reactions to the change process: public compliance, private acceptance or identification and internalization. Citing French and Raven (1959) and Raven (1965), Munduate and Gravenhorst (2003: 6) state that change agents have six bases of power and that each will elicit diferent reactions by organizational members: reward, coercion, legitimacy, expertise, reference and information. Use of reward and coercion as the power bases by the change agent leads only to public compliance, leaving the value systems of the targets of change intact. On the other hand, use of legitimacy (belief in the legitimate right of the change agent to exert in?uence on the target), reference (the situation where targets identify themselves with the change agent) and expertise (targets perceive the change agent as having expertise in the area) as power bases induces private acceptance on behalf of the target. The only base of power which creates a sustained change independent of surveillance by and presence of the change agent is noted by the authors as information that will lead to a cognitive change in the target's beliefs, attitudes, or values (ibid.: 7). The model of power bases of change agents proposed by Munduate and Gravenhorst ofers an original approach for understanding the impact of leadership style on the organizational members during the change process. However, overemphasis of the interpersonal relationship between the change agents and change targets as the basis of the evaluation of the success of the change process renders the model deficient in explaining the change at the organizational level and the associated role of the change agent. Change of interpersonal relations corresponds to the micro level of organizational change, while, for instance, organizational culture establishes the meso level of change process. Neglecting any reference to organizational culture which is more than the sum of the actions, values, attitudes or beliefs that are held by the individual organizational members and of the interpersonal relationships, the model proposes an oversimplified notion of the potential power bases of change agency and impact of their use on the change process. Moreover, the rather implicit assumption of change agent as a rational decision maker in the previous research on change agency, here becomes explicit with the presentation of change agent as the leader who utilizes the power bases he or she has on the basis of rational cost-benefit calculations. The role of change agents is not limited to the publicly visible activities associated with seemingly rational and linear change processes on which the prescriptive models in the literature are based; but more importantly it involves what Buchanan and Boddy (1992: 27) call 'backstage activities' where the activities of the change agent are focused on bargaining and negotiation with diferent interest groups in the organization. Unfortunately, this publicly covert and inherently political dimension of change management is often ignored in the change agency research. Inattention to the link between change agency and foresight Building on these three problems in the change management literature's framing of agency, the poor treatment of temporal and in particularly foresight dimensions of change agency in this literature is one of our central concerns. Meyerson and Scully point
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to the depoliticized nature of foresight in change agency in the organizational studies literature as follows:
Change agents in organizational literature generally do not have broader visions of change in mind. Although terms like 'revolutionary' and 'deep' are sometimes used to describe change, those terms rarely refer to system change that challenges the embedded assumptions of the status quo. (1995: 594-5)
In the final analysis, owing to all these implicit assumptions on change agents, which reduce them to a-political, disembodied, decontexualized, autonomous and rational actors, foresight of change agents is framed without reference to the political, economic and history context. When context, history and relationships are absent or reduced to a set of moderating in?uences, foresight becomes an individual property of disembodied creativity. That is, foresight becomes an individual attribute or a skill that is independent of the contextual circumstances and network of relations which also inform an agent's ability to foresee and identify path dependencies, disjunctures and temporal ?uctuations, as well as direc tion of contextual and relational shifts over time. We argue that foresight has two dimensions: re?exive and futuristic. The re?exive dimension involves use of retrospection to identify temporal patterns, trends and shifts in contextual and relational phenomena with a view to forecast what may come if the temporal patterns remain the same. Therefore, the re?exive dimension of agentic fore - sight involves a historical and situated perspective recognizing routines, path dependen- cies and patterns of change over time. Authors such as Bourdieu (1980), Giddens (1984) and Fairclough (1992) have attempted within the sociological tradition to explain the foresight from this situated perspective, using terms such as habitus, and routinized and normalized behavior to denote the predictable routines of human behavior which deline- ates foresight in the domain of retrospection. However, it is important to note that their formulations of foresight in this way have not been widely adopted within management literature. Instead, in the mainstream literature of change management, change agents are envis- aged as a-political, disembodied, decontexualized, autonomous and rational actors. Therefore, this re?exive dimension of foresight is predictably missing in formulations of change agency. What remains in abundance then is the futuristic dimension of foresight. In this dimension, change agency is viewed as an individual trait or skill, either innate or learned, which involves prediction without recourse to history. This kind of foresight is therefore disembodied. It does not refer to present and past but provides a routemap for the future. The next section questions whether the above problems associated with change agency can be addressed. Is it possible to address the contextual, relational, performative and temporal inadequacies of the change agency literature? There are notable exceptions to our characterization of change management literature in terms of its treatment of change agency. For example, an exception to the pattern to overlook power relations as well as other embedded processes taking place throughout the change process is ofered by Agocs (1997). She maintains that organizational change is political in that the exercise of power and control by diferent parties involved is central in the process. This, in turn, means that change agents may need to confront institutionalized
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Agency in management of change 255 resistance by the power holders in the organization. However, prescriptive models of change agency or 'guidelines' for success, which dominate the literature, are designated as tools for dealing with the resistance from middle or lower ranks, not from the higher echelons of the organization. The lack of consideration for potential resistance by power holders, it can be argued, is largely due to the blindness towards the organizational power dynamics. Others (Collinson et al., 1990; Acker, 2000; Lawrence, 2000; Dawson, 2003) also point to the contradictory status of change agents in the organization, which stems from the friction between their job responsibilities and organizational position when they, as a part of their job, need to monitor and control those who hold a higher rank than themselves. In stark contrast with other literature on change agency, which focuses on necessary skills and competencies of change agents, Agocs claims:
It is not the knowledge or expertise in itself that is the source of power and a resource for organizational change: it is the knowledge upon which authorities have conferred legitimacy and assimilated into the organization's ideological framework. Whether a change message will be accorded legitimacy is the choice and decision of authorities. (1997: 925)
Hence Agocs incorporates the micro politics of interpersonal relations into her framework of the potential power sources for the change agents. Accordingly, six potential strategies that change agents may make use of are: (i) to resist; (ii) to create allies; (iii) to make a case for change; (iv) to make efective use of existing resources; (v) to mobilize politically; and (vi) to build new parallel organizations (ibid.: 929). With Agocs's contribution, the field gains a politicized notion of change agency as opposed to the abstract idea of agency dominating the mainstream literature. However, in that article, where she aims to 'assist change advocates' by ofering strategies to struggle with institutionalized resistance, Agocs (p. 917) does not ofer a comprehensive contextual analysis of change agents. Nevertheless, as Acker (2000) emphasizes in her interpretation of the success and failure of gender equity intervention projects, competencies, capacities and strategies of the change agent are only a few among many factors that afect the outcome of the change process. In addition to the political nature of organizational relations, change agents themselves are also political beings who strive to act according to their own personal values. For example, Tichy (1974: 164) explained change agency on the basis of the interplay between the role assumed by change agents, their personal values and life projects. Based on the survey of 91 social-change agents, he formulated what he calls 'change agents' general change model' which covers three components: value, cognitive and change technologies, all of which refer to the qualities and traits of change agents. He looks at the congruence of values and actions and of cognition and action. The model that Tichy proposes makes an important contribution to the change agency research since it is not limited to com- petencies of the change agents, but it also takes into account their values and cognitions. In addition, Tichy's model sheds light on some possible sites of self-contradiction that change agents may experience while they are realizing their role throughout the change process. One of the most original contributions to change agency literature in recent years has been Meyerson's (2001a) book, Tempered Radicals: How People Use Diference to Inspire Change at Work. The basic contribution of the work to the organizational change literature is the introduction of a new type of change agents, 'tempered radicals', who
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are both the insiders and the outsiders to the organization due to the con?ict of their personal values with the dominant organizational culture (ibid.: xi). The term is defined by Meyerson and Scully as follows:
The individuals who identified with and are committed to their organization, and are also committed to a cause, community or ideology that is fundamentally diferent from, and possibly at odds with the dominant culture of their organization. (1995: 586)
Being an insider in the organization equips tempered radicals with information regarding the dynamics of the organizational system and the ability to act confidently within that familiar system (ibid.: 596). Moreover, tempered radicals are aware of the impor- tance of gaining allies among those representing the majority perspective which will provide them with 'a sense of legitimacy, access to resources and contacts, technical and task assistance, emotional support, and advice' (Meyerson, 2001b: 99). This new under- standing of change agency allows for the investigation of power relations not only to situate the role of change agent, but also to examine the potential strategic power sources, which are shaped by their life projects and which they may exploit in order to mould and promote change. Another work that provides an alternative perspective to organi- zational change and agency is an edited book by Ledwith and Colgan (1996a), Women and Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics, which is a collection of empirical studies from diferent sectors. Throughout the book, strategies used by women to challenge the status quo and gender order in their organizations are explored. Ledwith and Colgan (1996b: 30-31) argue that women as change agents need to have political skills and to be aware of the organizational power relations. Neither Meyerson's study, nor Ledwith and Colgan's edited work focus on a specific functional category in organizations, but conceptualize change agency as a quality which is rather dispersed through diferent levels of an organization. However, within the scope of this chapter, we limit our discussion to change agents, although this in no way suggests that we see organizational change as solely the property or responsibility of a small set of individuals. Discussion: Reclaiming foresight in change agency Returning to our earlier discussion on re?exive and futuristic archetypes of foresight may be useful in positioning foresight in agency. In recent years, there has been extensive critique of explicitly retrospective and a-historically futuristic conceptions of human agency. In order to understand the complexity of foresight as an aspect of agency, we need to question the issue of both history and future. There is a tradition in social sciences which perceives the history and the future as immutable objective realities (see Giddens, 1974). This approach to the temporal spectrum means that through careful and robust study of our past we can reveal time-bound patterns and changes. However, this under- standing of foresight fails to recognize the infinitely subjective configurations of history as recorded by individuals and the immense capacity of agents for transformation, and their strategic deployment of resources and relationships in order to afect changes, which may ultimately disrupt the temporal order that our careful calculations suggest. Berkhout and Hertin (2002: 39) explain: 'humans are uniquely capable of shaping their futures and acting re?exively in response to new knowledge about what the future may hold'. While there is the problem of treating history and future as immutable objective reali- ties, treating history and the future as domains of infinite possibility is also problematic.
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Agency in management of change 257 This leads to what Paulo Freire (1968), in his masterpiece, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, so aptly calls 'verbalism', as evidenced by absence of action. Considering past and future as a seamless series of possibilities may absolve us from the burden of planning a future that is better than today. What is required then is a conception of foresight in agency that combines a conception of time as possibility and time as certainty. In order to operationalize this ideal, we can give the example of most card games which embody elements of luck (possibility) and mastery (immutable knowledge). While it is possible for luck or mastery to dictate the final outcome of each game, it is expected that mastery would help an individual to overcome poor luck over a number of rounds. Translating this to agency in the context of management of change would be useful. While some aspects of organizational change yield well to future planning based on re?exivity and retrospection, some aspects of change may not be foreseen. Fischhof (2003: 311) elaborates that unforeseen occurrences should be considered in assessing work and performance in organizational settings:
In situations where information is limited and indeterminate, occasional surprises - and result- ing failures - are inevitable. It is both unfair and self-defeating to castigate decision makers who have erred in fallible systems, without admitting to that fallibility and doing something to improve the system.
Recognizing that some changes cannot be foreseen allows the change agents to prepare for the unexpected. Although 'preparing for the unexpected' sounds a misnomer or an oxymoron, an expectation of the 'unexpected' allows for individuals to develop a capacity for ?exibility, through which they can readjust their strategies and consider redeploy- ment of their resources and amend their future plans. In framing our syncretic model of foresight which draws on immutable and chance aspects of time, we contend that such syncretism also requires a keen awareness of the agent's own capabilities, resources, relationships and context. Indeed, Fischhof et al. (2005) argue that even emotional capital impacts on an agent's capacity for foresight. Only through such an awareness of their own circumstances and capacities, can agents, prepare for both the path-dependent changes and the unexpected. Although Fink et al. (2005) provide such a syncretic model, their formulation resides at the organizational foresight level, and does not relate to foresight of the agency. Recent reports suggest that foresight is becoming an integral requirement for profes- sional work. For example, Conde (2004) increased litigations from customers against professional workers based on their failure to act proactively and deliver foresightful action. The implication of this is that foresight is now expected in wider constituent domains of life. The modern-day obsession with long-range planning difuses the responsibility for foresight in change agency from specialized change agents in organizations to all members of the organization. This is supplemented with mechanisms of individual professional responsibility and systems of accountability which now increasingly demand that individuals develop foresight. Conclusion It is important to note that foresight is only one of the elements of agency; the resources, strategies, relationships and contexts of agents also frame the volume and scope of their agentic power. Therefore, shifting of emphasis from specialized foresight, which was
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expected of change agents, to individual foresight, which is now expected of professional workers, should be considered in the context of the general individualization of working life in industrialized countries. Difusion of foresight as a required professional competence across the organization means that foresight is likely to become more common a concern for understanding agency that is power, in?uence, competences and resource deployment strategies of people at work. In this chapter, we examined foresight in the context of change agency. In order to achieve this, we examined the change agency literature and questioned the possibility of addressing its weaknesses through the lens of foresight. We ofered a multidimensional conception of change agency, which refers to it in contextual, relational and temporal terms. Finally, we presented foresight as a central concern of the organizational change process. References
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Harper, J.C. and Georghiou, L. (2005), 'Foresight in innovation policy: shared visions for a science park and business-university links in a city region', Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 17 (2): 147-60. Huy, Q.N. (2001), 'Time, temporal capability and planned change', Academy of Management Review, 26(4): 601-23. Kanter, R.M. (1984), The Change Masters, London: Allen & Unwin. Kanter, R.M. (1999), Leading Change, London: Simon & Schuster. Kirkpatrick, S.A. and Locke, E.A. (1991), 'Leadership: do traits matter?', Academy of Management Executive, 5(2): 48-60. Lawrence, E. (2000), 'Equal opportunities ofcers and managing equality changes', Personnel Review, 29(3): 381-401. Ledwith and F. Colgan (eds) (1996a), Women and Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics , London: Macmillan. Ledwith, S. and Colgan, F. (1996b), 'Women as organizational change agents', in Ledwith and Colgan (eds), pp. 1-43. Lewin, K. (1951), Field Theory in Social Science, New York: Harper & Row. Meyerson, D.E. (2001a), Tempered Radicals: How People Use Diference to Inspire Change at Work, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Meyerson, D.E. (2001b), 'Radical change, the quiet way', Harvard Business Review, October: 92-100. Meyerson, D.E. and Scully, M.A. (1995), 'Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change', Organization Science, 6(5): 585-600. Muir, C. (1996), 'Workplace readiness for communicating diversity', Journal of Business Communication, 33(4): 475-86. Munduate, L. and Gravenhorst, K.M.B. (2003), 'Power dynamics and organizational change: an introduction', Applied Psychology: An International Review, 52(1): 1-13. Nadler, D.A. and Tushman, M.L. (1990), 'Beyond the charismatic leader: leadership and organizational change', California Management Review, Winter: 77-97. Simon, H. (1987), 'Making management decisions: the role of intuition and emotion', Academy of Management Executive, 1(1): 57-64. Tichy, N.M. (1974), 'Agents of planned social change: congruence of values, cognitions and actions', Administrative Science Quarterly, 19(2): 164-82. Tsoukas, H. and Shepherd, J. (2004), 'Coping with the future: developing organizational foresightfulness', Futures, 36(2): 137-44. Volberda, H.W. (1998), Building the Flexible Firm: How to Remain Competitive, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weick, K.E. and Quinn, R.E. (1999), 'Organizational change and development', Annual Review of Psychology, 50: 361-86. Westley, F. and Mintzberg, H. (1989), 'Visionary leadership and strategic management', Strategic Management Journal, 10: 17-32.
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In management, a review, analysis, and synthesis of past definitions and usages of the foresight concept into a generic definition, in order to make the concept measurable has classified foresight as a behaviour
Research Study in Management of Change: Bringing In Relationality, Situations and Foresight
Introduction There is an overwhelming preoccupation in the management literature with predicting the future and capitalizing on the opportunities that such a vision may ofer. This is due to a recognition of the primacy of foresight in economic development (Harper and Georghiou, 2005) Decades of unprecedented growth of the literatures on foresight (Costanzo, 2004; Tsoukas and Shepherd, 2004), forecasting (Chuls, 2003) and intuition (Simon, 1987; Agor, 1986) in management is indicative of this preoccupation. However, we contend that this very literature is littered with conceptions of foresight which do not attend to interplay of foresight and change agency. Indeed, foresight is often considered as an organizational and strategic issue, rather than a phenomenon which essentially resides at the level of the individual, as an essential part of individual agency. We focus on foresight as an aspect of change agency in the management of change literature and explore: (i) what deems framing of change agency weak in the management of change literature and (ii) whether it is possible to address inadequacies of the change agency lit- erature through reframing of foresight. Finally, we call for a framework which captures the multidimensional nature of change agency, and which refers to change agency in contextual, relational and temporal terms. Agency is a central theme in change management scholarship. However, we demonstrate in this chapter that change management literature's portrayal of agency does not do justice to the complexity of the concept. We try to disentangle the concept of agency by exposing the problems with its current treatment in the change management literature and question whether it is possible to reframe agency in a way true to its nature. In order to achieve this, we refashion agency with relational, situated and foresight dimensions and explore fore- sight as an essential, but yet severely underplayed, component of change agency. Therefore, the chapter makes a theoretical contribution to the field of organizational change, by bring- ing contextual and relational insights into micro-level strategy making. The chapter is organized as follows. First, we define agency, drawing on sociological literature. Next, we critique the models of agency in the process of organizational change. Third, we introduce foresight as a central concern of organizational change process. The final section concludes. Defining agency 'Agency' is an ephemeral concept which often evades definition. Eforts to define and frame agency have engaged scholars from all disciplines of social sciences. However, the disciplinary polarization has meant that agency is often conceptualized either from explicitly individualized or from highly context-dependent perspectives. Nevertheless, increased attention to structure, agency and action debates in the social sciences has 249
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recently yielded the emergence of broadly syncretic conceptions of agency. For example, in their authoritative paper titled, 'What is agency?', Emirbayer and Mische (1998: 970) define agency as: 'the temporally constructed engagement by actors of diferent structural environments - the temporal relational contexts of action - which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations'. Emirbayer and Mische's definition of agency sets it in a social interaction, structural environment, temporal relational context, in which action is both situated and crea- tive. This definition provides an ideal measure against which we assess the treatment of agency in the change management literature. In the next section, we examine the models of change agency and re?ect on the problems in their theorization. What is wrong with the models of agency in the change management literature? The survey of the change management literature reveals an overfragmented research area crowded with various disconnected works, each piece focusing on a specific aspect of the phenomenon without articulating it in the totality of the subject or situating it in a wider theoretical framework of change agency. In addition to the lack of theoretical rigor, the works in the field also sufer from a lack of empirical grounding. As noted by Huy (2001), most of the works are examples of predominantly prescriptive models of change agents established on scientifically vulnerable theoretical and empirical bases. In addition to this general ?aw in the literature, there are four other problematic areas: (i ) a rational, autonomous and individualistic conceptualization of change agency, (ii) an acontextual and disembodied focus on change agents' competencies and traits, (iii) a lack of consideration for power dynamics in the change process and (iv) an inattention to the link between change agency and foresight, the issue which this chapter explores further. Change agents as rational and autonomous individuals First, there are several competing models of change agency that treat the concept as an individualized phenomenon. Until the 1980s, the work on change agency was confined to organizational development (OD) research inspired by the works of Lewin (1951). Within the OD tradition, the conception of change was that of a linear and rational process of planned change in relatively stable organizations, and understanding of the role of change agent was that of unbiased external or internal consultant as facilitator armed with counseling, consensus building, listening and coaching skills (Beckhard, 1969; Tichy, 1974). These rationalized and individualized understandings of the change process and change agency were later identified as main weaknesses of the OD perspective (Dawson, 1994, 2003; Caldwell, 2003). Another strand in the literature that presents such a linear process of change focuses on the tempo of change for understanding change agency. Weick and Quinn (1999: 375) define two types of change corresponding to diferent tempos of the process: episodic or radical change, which is discontinuous and intermittent; and continuous change, which is incremental and evolving. Drawing on that typology of organizational change, change agents are associated with diferent types of roles and competencies. In episodic change, change agents assume a proactive role as 'prime movers' in the process which is governed by the 'logic of replacement' (ibid.: 375). On the other hand, the basis of continuous change is described with reference to the 'logic of attraction' and the role of the change
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Agency in management of change 251 agent is that of a facilitator where she or he acts as a 'sense-maker'(ibid.: 380). These two distinct logics, which epitomize change agents' roles and strategies, correspond to two diferent types of leadership conceptualized by Bass (1995, cited in Munduate and Gravenhorst, 2003: 4); transactional (logic of replacement) and transformational (logic of attraction). The common vulnerability of these contributions is their tendency to analyze the strategies and activities of change agents as linear processes which are coor- dinated by autonomous individuals, who act on their rational calculations, drawing on 'perfect' information on organizational resources for change. Indeed, this approach is insufciently detailed to capture the reality of organizational processes of change, which is characterized by layers of negotiated and politicized forms of access to resources. Change agents as a-contextual and disembodied actors Our second concern is over decontextualized and disembodied understanding of change agency in the literature. In the 1980s, associated with the rhetoric of the ?exible, com- petitive and innovative organization (Atkinson, 1985; Volberda, 1998), a new stream of literature, which is fed by leadership research and which primarily focuses on the role of senior managers and organizational leaders throughout the change process, has begun to grow outside of the OD tradition (Kanter, 1984, 1999). In this literature, the role and skills of change agents, such as personal drive, energy, courage and vision, the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, cognitive ability, self-confidence and knowledge of business, ?exibility and risk taking, have become almost identical with those of efective leaders (Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991; Dulewicz and Herbert, 2000). Due to its reliance on a single individual as the focus of the change process, that is, the extraordinary qualities of a charismatic leader, this approach was criticized by many change agency scholars (Nadler and Tushman, 1990; Caldwell, 2003). Posing a challenge to the 'change leader' approach, the 'contingency perspective' claims that there is not a universal, standard formula for change agency; rather it is contingent upon business and organizational environment (Dunphy and Stace, 1993: 905). Nadler and Tushman (1990) argued that there is not a single type of organizational change and an associated style of leadership. They proposed a typology of four diferent change types based on the pace of and motivation for change, each requiring diferent types of leadership styles. Ironically, although the contingency perspective is based upon a critique of the 'charismatic leader' approach, it is also centered on the idea of the individual leader as the focal point of the organizational change process (Westley and Mintzberg, 1989). However, in both 'change leader' and 'contingency' perspectives, change agents are ontologically situated as disembodied and a-contextual individuals. Correspondingly, the level of exploration of change agency is overwhelmingly reduced to that of individual psychology. Caldwell (2003: 132), in his critical review of change agent literature, asserts that the inclination to associate change agents with extraordinary qualities, traits and attributes, endures in diferent models of change agency. This ontological attribution leads to the omission of contextual analysis of change and excessive focus on change agents' competency and traits, which essentially results in in?ation of prescriptions regarding the necessary competencies for change agents and recipes for success. Consequently, the change agency literature is packed with a series of presumably universal lists of competencies and skills required by change agents. Some lists include skills in specific areas such as forecasting, anticipating, counseling, consensus building, listening, coaching and facilitating (for
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example, Beckhard, 1969; Bass, 1995; Weick and Quinn, 1999) or more professional competencies such as being trained in work process analysis, process consultancy or organizational development training (for example, Tichy, 1974; Huy, 2001). Elsewhere, personal traits such as the desire to lead, honesty and integrity, cognitive ability, problem solving, selfconfidence, expertise, information and ?exibility and risk taking are also included in these lists (for example, Kanter, 1984, 1999; Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991; Buchanan and Boddy, 1992; Dulewicz and Herbert, 2000; Munduate and Gravenhorst, 2003). Other lists (for example, Buchanan and Boddy, 1992; Muir, 1996; Huy, 2001) include interpersonal skills such as team building, negotiation, authority, efective communication, building trust, being sympathetic, and competency in interpersonal inquiry. Hence, most of the works attempt to present blueprint models of change agency in the form of advice and guidelines. Although these may be considered useful from the practitioners' point of view as they specify possible individual strategies that may be employed by the change agents, they add up to an unsatisfactory attempt at scientific inquiry due to the lack of a robust multilayered analysis of the conditions in which change agency takes place. Failure to recognize power dynamics in the change process Third, although some models of change agency seek to contextualize the role of change agents within the organizational framework, these works overlook the power dynamics involved in the change process. An example of this is the model of change agency which is proposed by Huy (2001). Focusing on the planned change process, he constructs a model exploring two dimensions of organizational change: time and content. Four ideal types of intervention that come out of the time-content matrix of change are commanding, engineering, teaching and socializing, each corresponding to a change in diferent spheres of organization, that is in formal structures, work processes, beliefs and social relationships, respectively (ibid.: 604). Accordingly, Huy (p. 604) argues that corresponding to these four ideal types, change agents will be diferent organizational actors in each intervention: namely, the people from the higher echelons of organizations assisted by external consultants will be change agents in the commanding type of interventions. The professional task analysts will be change agents in the engineering type. The process consultants and psychoanalysts will act as change agents in the teaching type. Finally, the organizational members themselves will adopt change agent roles in the socializing type. Huy's model of ideal types furthers the debate on the role of change agents by pointing out the various personal competencies and styles of leadership required for intervening in diferent aspects of organization. However, the model still shares the mainstream change agency tradition's myopic tendency to limit the study of the subject to the construction of 'ideal types' and assignment of some trait and competency requirements to change agents. Another work on change agency that deserves to be mentioned in this context is Muir's 'system readiness approach' (1996: 478). Here, the author attempts to situate the change process in the external macro-environmental situation and internal organiza- tional context such as formal and informal networks and procedures, as well as pointing to the importance of assessing the impact of diferent ranks of organization on the process. Muir's work presents a valuable contribution by including external and internal contextual factors as the factors afecting the success of change process. However, after the discussion of the contextual nature of change, change agents are again depicted as a-political individuals with some skill and ability requirements.
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Agency in management of change 253 Alternatively, Munduate and Gravenhorst (2003) draw a model for exploring the power bases of change agents within the organizational change process which is based on a dual typology of episodic and continuous change. Focusing on the continuous change process and relying on the social psychology tradition, they note that the individuals who are targeted through change programs display three possible reactions to the change process: public compliance, private acceptance or identification and internalization. Citing French and Raven (1959) and Raven (1965), Munduate and Gravenhorst (2003: 6) state that change agents have six bases of power and that each will elicit diferent reactions by organizational members: reward, coercion, legitimacy, expertise, reference and information. Use of reward and coercion as the power bases by the change agent leads only to public compliance, leaving the value systems of the targets of change intact. On the other hand, use of legitimacy (belief in the legitimate right of the change agent to exert in?uence on the target), reference (the situation where targets identify themselves with the change agent) and expertise (targets perceive the change agent as having expertise in the area) as power bases induces private acceptance on behalf of the target. The only base of power which creates a sustained change independent of surveillance by and presence of the change agent is noted by the authors as information that will lead to a cognitive change in the target's beliefs, attitudes, or values (ibid.: 7). The model of power bases of change agents proposed by Munduate and Gravenhorst ofers an original approach for understanding the impact of leadership style on the organizational members during the change process. However, overemphasis of the interpersonal relationship between the change agents and change targets as the basis of the evaluation of the success of the change process renders the model deficient in explaining the change at the organizational level and the associated role of the change agent. Change of interpersonal relations corresponds to the micro level of organizational change, while, for instance, organizational culture establishes the meso level of change process. Neglecting any reference to organizational culture which is more than the sum of the actions, values, attitudes or beliefs that are held by the individual organizational members and of the interpersonal relationships, the model proposes an oversimplified notion of the potential power bases of change agency and impact of their use on the change process. Moreover, the rather implicit assumption of change agent as a rational decision maker in the previous research on change agency, here becomes explicit with the presentation of change agent as the leader who utilizes the power bases he or she has on the basis of rational cost-benefit calculations. The role of change agents is not limited to the publicly visible activities associated with seemingly rational and linear change processes on which the prescriptive models in the literature are based; but more importantly it involves what Buchanan and Boddy (1992: 27) call 'backstage activities' where the activities of the change agent are focused on bargaining and negotiation with diferent interest groups in the organization. Unfortunately, this publicly covert and inherently political dimension of change management is often ignored in the change agency research. Inattention to the link between change agency and foresight Building on these three problems in the change management literature's framing of agency, the poor treatment of temporal and in particularly foresight dimensions of change agency in this literature is one of our central concerns. Meyerson and Scully point
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to the depoliticized nature of foresight in change agency in the organizational studies literature as follows:
Change agents in organizational literature generally do not have broader visions of change in mind. Although terms like 'revolutionary' and 'deep' are sometimes used to describe change, those terms rarely refer to system change that challenges the embedded assumptions of the status quo. (1995: 594-5)
In the final analysis, owing to all these implicit assumptions on change agents, which reduce them to a-political, disembodied, decontexualized, autonomous and rational actors, foresight of change agents is framed without reference to the political, economic and history context. When context, history and relationships are absent or reduced to a set of moderating in?uences, foresight becomes an individual property of disembodied creativity. That is, foresight becomes an individual attribute or a skill that is independent of the contextual circumstances and network of relations which also inform an agent's ability to foresee and identify path dependencies, disjunctures and temporal ?uctuations, as well as direc tion of contextual and relational shifts over time. We argue that foresight has two dimensions: re?exive and futuristic. The re?exive dimension involves use of retrospection to identify temporal patterns, trends and shifts in contextual and relational phenomena with a view to forecast what may come if the temporal patterns remain the same. Therefore, the re?exive dimension of agentic fore - sight involves a historical and situated perspective recognizing routines, path dependen- cies and patterns of change over time. Authors such as Bourdieu (1980), Giddens (1984) and Fairclough (1992) have attempted within the sociological tradition to explain the foresight from this situated perspective, using terms such as habitus, and routinized and normalized behavior to denote the predictable routines of human behavior which deline- ates foresight in the domain of retrospection. However, it is important to note that their formulations of foresight in this way have not been widely adopted within management literature. Instead, in the mainstream literature of change management, change agents are envis- aged as a-political, disembodied, decontexualized, autonomous and rational actors. Therefore, this re?exive dimension of foresight is predictably missing in formulations of change agency. What remains in abundance then is the futuristic dimension of foresight. In this dimension, change agency is viewed as an individual trait or skill, either innate or learned, which involves prediction without recourse to history. This kind of foresight is therefore disembodied. It does not refer to present and past but provides a routemap for the future. The next section questions whether the above problems associated with change agency can be addressed. Is it possible to address the contextual, relational, performative and temporal inadequacies of the change agency literature? There are notable exceptions to our characterization of change management literature in terms of its treatment of change agency. For example, an exception to the pattern to overlook power relations as well as other embedded processes taking place throughout the change process is ofered by Agocs (1997). She maintains that organizational change is political in that the exercise of power and control by diferent parties involved is central in the process. This, in turn, means that change agents may need to confront institutionalized
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Agency in management of change 255 resistance by the power holders in the organization. However, prescriptive models of change agency or 'guidelines' for success, which dominate the literature, are designated as tools for dealing with the resistance from middle or lower ranks, not from the higher echelons of the organization. The lack of consideration for potential resistance by power holders, it can be argued, is largely due to the blindness towards the organizational power dynamics. Others (Collinson et al., 1990; Acker, 2000; Lawrence, 2000; Dawson, 2003) also point to the contradictory status of change agents in the organization, which stems from the friction between their job responsibilities and organizational position when they, as a part of their job, need to monitor and control those who hold a higher rank than themselves. In stark contrast with other literature on change agency, which focuses on necessary skills and competencies of change agents, Agocs claims:
It is not the knowledge or expertise in itself that is the source of power and a resource for organizational change: it is the knowledge upon which authorities have conferred legitimacy and assimilated into the organization's ideological framework. Whether a change message will be accorded legitimacy is the choice and decision of authorities. (1997: 925)
Hence Agocs incorporates the micro politics of interpersonal relations into her framework of the potential power sources for the change agents. Accordingly, six potential strategies that change agents may make use of are: (i) to resist; (ii) to create allies; (iii) to make a case for change; (iv) to make efective use of existing resources; (v) to mobilize politically; and (vi) to build new parallel organizations (ibid.: 929). With Agocs's contribution, the field gains a politicized notion of change agency as opposed to the abstract idea of agency dominating the mainstream literature. However, in that article, where she aims to 'assist change advocates' by ofering strategies to struggle with institutionalized resistance, Agocs (p. 917) does not ofer a comprehensive contextual analysis of change agents. Nevertheless, as Acker (2000) emphasizes in her interpretation of the success and failure of gender equity intervention projects, competencies, capacities and strategies of the change agent are only a few among many factors that afect the outcome of the change process. In addition to the political nature of organizational relations, change agents themselves are also political beings who strive to act according to their own personal values. For example, Tichy (1974: 164) explained change agency on the basis of the interplay between the role assumed by change agents, their personal values and life projects. Based on the survey of 91 social-change agents, he formulated what he calls 'change agents' general change model' which covers three components: value, cognitive and change technologies, all of which refer to the qualities and traits of change agents. He looks at the congruence of values and actions and of cognition and action. The model that Tichy proposes makes an important contribution to the change agency research since it is not limited to com- petencies of the change agents, but it also takes into account their values and cognitions. In addition, Tichy's model sheds light on some possible sites of self-contradiction that change agents may experience while they are realizing their role throughout the change process. One of the most original contributions to change agency literature in recent years has been Meyerson's (2001a) book, Tempered Radicals: How People Use Diference to Inspire Change at Work. The basic contribution of the work to the organizational change literature is the introduction of a new type of change agents, 'tempered radicals', who
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are both the insiders and the outsiders to the organization due to the con?ict of their personal values with the dominant organizational culture (ibid.: xi). The term is defined by Meyerson and Scully as follows:
The individuals who identified with and are committed to their organization, and are also committed to a cause, community or ideology that is fundamentally diferent from, and possibly at odds with the dominant culture of their organization. (1995: 586)
Being an insider in the organization equips tempered radicals with information regarding the dynamics of the organizational system and the ability to act confidently within that familiar system (ibid.: 596). Moreover, tempered radicals are aware of the impor- tance of gaining allies among those representing the majority perspective which will provide them with 'a sense of legitimacy, access to resources and contacts, technical and task assistance, emotional support, and advice' (Meyerson, 2001b: 99). This new under- standing of change agency allows for the investigation of power relations not only to situate the role of change agent, but also to examine the potential strategic power sources, which are shaped by their life projects and which they may exploit in order to mould and promote change. Another work that provides an alternative perspective to organi- zational change and agency is an edited book by Ledwith and Colgan (1996a), Women and Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics, which is a collection of empirical studies from diferent sectors. Throughout the book, strategies used by women to challenge the status quo and gender order in their organizations are explored. Ledwith and Colgan (1996b: 30-31) argue that women as change agents need to have political skills and to be aware of the organizational power relations. Neither Meyerson's study, nor Ledwith and Colgan's edited work focus on a specific functional category in organizations, but conceptualize change agency as a quality which is rather dispersed through diferent levels of an organization. However, within the scope of this chapter, we limit our discussion to change agents, although this in no way suggests that we see organizational change as solely the property or responsibility of a small set of individuals. Discussion: Reclaiming foresight in change agency Returning to our earlier discussion on re?exive and futuristic archetypes of foresight may be useful in positioning foresight in agency. In recent years, there has been extensive critique of explicitly retrospective and a-historically futuristic conceptions of human agency. In order to understand the complexity of foresight as an aspect of agency, we need to question the issue of both history and future. There is a tradition in social sciences which perceives the history and the future as immutable objective realities (see Giddens, 1974). This approach to the temporal spectrum means that through careful and robust study of our past we can reveal time-bound patterns and changes. However, this under- standing of foresight fails to recognize the infinitely subjective configurations of history as recorded by individuals and the immense capacity of agents for transformation, and their strategic deployment of resources and relationships in order to afect changes, which may ultimately disrupt the temporal order that our careful calculations suggest. Berkhout and Hertin (2002: 39) explain: 'humans are uniquely capable of shaping their futures and acting re?exively in response to new knowledge about what the future may hold'. While there is the problem of treating history and future as immutable objective reali- ties, treating history and the future as domains of infinite possibility is also problematic.
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Agency in management of change 257 This leads to what Paulo Freire (1968), in his masterpiece, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, so aptly calls 'verbalism', as evidenced by absence of action. Considering past and future as a seamless series of possibilities may absolve us from the burden of planning a future that is better than today. What is required then is a conception of foresight in agency that combines a conception of time as possibility and time as certainty. In order to operationalize this ideal, we can give the example of most card games which embody elements of luck (possibility) and mastery (immutable knowledge). While it is possible for luck or mastery to dictate the final outcome of each game, it is expected that mastery would help an individual to overcome poor luck over a number of rounds. Translating this to agency in the context of management of change would be useful. While some aspects of organizational change yield well to future planning based on re?exivity and retrospection, some aspects of change may not be foreseen. Fischhof (2003: 311) elaborates that unforeseen occurrences should be considered in assessing work and performance in organizational settings:
In situations where information is limited and indeterminate, occasional surprises - and result- ing failures - are inevitable. It is both unfair and self-defeating to castigate decision makers who have erred in fallible systems, without admitting to that fallibility and doing something to improve the system.
Recognizing that some changes cannot be foreseen allows the change agents to prepare for the unexpected. Although 'preparing for the unexpected' sounds a misnomer or an oxymoron, an expectation of the 'unexpected' allows for individuals to develop a capacity for ?exibility, through which they can readjust their strategies and consider redeploy- ment of their resources and amend their future plans. In framing our syncretic model of foresight which draws on immutable and chance aspects of time, we contend that such syncretism also requires a keen awareness of the agent's own capabilities, resources, relationships and context. Indeed, Fischhof et al. (2005) argue that even emotional capital impacts on an agent's capacity for foresight. Only through such an awareness of their own circumstances and capacities, can agents, prepare for both the path-dependent changes and the unexpected. Although Fink et al. (2005) provide such a syncretic model, their formulation resides at the organizational foresight level, and does not relate to foresight of the agency. Recent reports suggest that foresight is becoming an integral requirement for profes- sional work. For example, Conde (2004) increased litigations from customers against professional workers based on their failure to act proactively and deliver foresightful action. The implication of this is that foresight is now expected in wider constituent domains of life. The modern-day obsession with long-range planning difuses the responsibility for foresight in change agency from specialized change agents in organizations to all members of the organization. This is supplemented with mechanisms of individual professional responsibility and systems of accountability which now increasingly demand that individuals develop foresight. Conclusion It is important to note that foresight is only one of the elements of agency; the resources, strategies, relationships and contexts of agents also frame the volume and scope of their agentic power. Therefore, shifting of emphasis from specialized foresight, which was
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Handbook of research on strategy and foresight
expected of change agents, to individual foresight, which is now expected of professional workers, should be considered in the context of the general individualization of working life in industrialized countries. Difusion of foresight as a required professional competence across the organization means that foresight is likely to become more common a concern for understanding agency that is power, in?uence, competences and resource deployment strategies of people at work. In this chapter, we examined foresight in the context of change agency. In order to achieve this, we examined the change agency literature and questioned the possibility of addressing its weaknesses through the lens of foresight. We ofered a multidimensional conception of change agency, which refers to it in contextual, relational and temporal terms. Finally, we presented foresight as a central concern of the organizational change process. References
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