| dc.description.abstract | Strategic change is a result of the need to be or to continue to be more competitive.
Strategic change can be an award winning success or utter failure due to one reason or
the other. Many reasons have been found for strategic change failure but there isn’t
much focus on the choice of change agent. A change agent is one who initiates,
manages and supports the institutionalization of change. This means that the direction
which the change process takes depends heavily on the change agent chosen and their
capacity to influence people to change. There are several types of change agents. The
research question is thus, if the change agent has such a weighty responsibility, is it
possible that there could be an optimal choice of change agency based on type of
change being experienced? The change agent, when hired has a mandate to convert
the critical components of change (people, processes and technology) from what they
are to what they need to be based on the corporate strategy. This involves taking them
through the change management cycle to give results required for effective change
management to be said to have taken place (Appendix 1). The core role of the change
agent in executing the change lies in the ability to influence and change behavior of
people. Schools of thought of behavioral study look at how people behave and how to
influence behavior. The change agent’s core work is to change human behavior
through influencing cognitions and perceptions of the people aspect of a corporation
with an aim of eliciting corporate change. It is therefore important to regard the
capacity of the change agent to influence the people in an organization. To determine
the change agent’s capacity, a case study of Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) has
been done and the change agent’s performance has been appraised through the use of
the balanced scorecard. The results of the findings were compared to the related
theoretical framework and have led to the conclusions of this research. | en_US |
