A Preliminary Study of Participation Modes Between Internal and External Change Agents - A Case Study of Family Business Group in Taiwan

• Main Author: 張凱傑
• Other Authors: 林月雲
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93860555247950421413

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 企業管理研究所 === 101 === In order to adapt to external environmental change and the challenges of internal growth, modern enterprises normally have organizational changes frequently. No matter in academic and practice field, organizational change has always been a hot topic. Either progressive or revolutionary organizational changes are intended to enable enterprises to enhance operational efficiency of the activities carried out. Many literatures have pointed out that the success of the activities of these changes, often related to change agents, who are responsible for diagnosing, initiating, performing, monitoring and tracking activities. In this research, three large domestic family businesses were investigated to identify their organizational changes in recent years. Data were collected through interviewing each organization's internal change agent semi-structurally, to understand how they cooperated with external change agents. The findings of this study are as below: First of all, internal organizational change factors and the internal change agent's characteristics, affect his/her sensemaking more than outside environment change factors. In family business, the most important factor is the influence of family business leader. Second, internal change agents have three different types of sensemaking, namely cognitive, perceptive and rational. Each type affects the selection of the external change agents differently, which was mainly based on resource-orientation, relationship-orientation, or performance-orientation. Third, the research found that in accordance with the level of participation of external change agents, the cooperation modes have three different levels: high-level, middle-level, and low-level participation modes. A U-curve relationship between the three kinds of cooperation mode was observed that influences the success of organizational changes. Fourth, the research found that high-level and low-level participation are more likely to result in successful organizational changes, whereas middle-level participation generally leads to failure for two main reasons. First, an external change agent did not grasp organizational culture thoroughly enough; second, the external change agent did not obtain sufficient support from the executives.