Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
Master thesis
By Marlinde Uri
University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
MSc Business Administration: Change Management
June 22 nd 2015
Supervisor: Dr. B. Müller Co assessor: Prof. Dr. A. Boonstra
Word count: 12.242 (main text) / 15.674 (complete)
Peizerweg 60 9726 JL Groningen m.uri.1@student.rug.nl
S2022451
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
2 Abstract
As over 60 percent of technological change implementations fail and organisations are becoming more and more dependent on successful implementations and functioning of these technologies, a better understanding of change agents and their competencies is needed. Since many different competencies have proven to be crucial in implementing organisational change, the same set of competencies may be essential in implementing technological change as well. However, technological change differs largely from organizational change, as it entails changes in technical structures, but also organisational aspects.
Moreover, many organisations face high resistance among employees and functionality issues when implementing technological change. Therefore, this systematic literature review combines the field of technological change, e.g. socio-technical change, and competencies of change agents in organisational change. The term socio-technical change is used as it includes a change in social subsystems and technical subsystems. The results from this systematic literature review of 38 articles defined three categories of competencies: Social, political and technical. Although social and political competencies have proven to be crucial in both organizational and socio-technical change, only combined with technical competencies and analytical skills socio-technical change was implemented successfully.
Key words: socio-technical change, competencies change agents, social, political and technical
competencies, managing socio-technical change and technological leadership
Table of contents
Introduction ... 5
Theoretical framework ... 7
Change agent and competencies ... 7
Socio-technical change ... 7
Managing resistance and communicating effectively. ... 8
Managing technical challenges. ... 9
Categories ... 10
Socio-technical systems approach ... 13
Principles of socio-technical systems theory ... 13
Characteristics of socio-technical systems ... 15
Subsystems. ... 15
Congruence with the environment. ... 16
Theoretical framework ... 16
Methodology ... 19
Data collection ... 19
Consideration set. ... 20
Data analysis ... 21
Discussion and results ... 22
Descriptive results ... 22
Findings ... 23
Today’s technology leadership. ... 24
Translation of organisational needs to technological implications. ... 24
Social and political competencies. ... 25
Emotional stability and control. ... 25
Competencies in socio-technical change. ... 26
Social, political and technical competencies. ... 27
Perspectives from the socio-technical change literature. ... 28
Interpretation. ... 29
Principle of participation. ... 29
Opposing views. ... 30
Theoretical framework. ... 31
Discussion ... 33
Proposed conceptual framework ... 34
Conclusion ... 35
Limitations ... 35
Theoretical implications ... 36
Practical implications ... 37
Future directions ... 37
References ... 38
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
4
Appendix ... 45
Appendix A ... 45
Appendix B ... 46
Appendix C ... 47
Appendix D ... 50
Appendix E ... 51
Introduction
On the second of May this year the Dutch newspaper NRC announced that Dutch minister of Defence, Hennis-Plasschaert, has serious intentions to cancel the largest ICT project of the Dutch government ever: ‘SPEER’, with estimated costs ranging from 433 million to 900 million Euros. Most of the budget was spent on external distributors of the new technology (NOS
1).
In today’s technology-driven world organisations face tremendous challenges with automating their processes, updating systems and implementing smart information technology (IT) solutions. While technological change is not completely new as a phenomenon, the interrelatedness and dependence between organisational change and new technologies has increased significantly. Whereas a new technology system only affected the IT department in previous decades, nowadays it affects the whole organisation and its employees (Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrzak, Dougherty, & Faraj, 2007). Moreover, almost two-third of these technological changes fail: They do not meet their initial deadlines, they exceed their budgets, they lack functionality or high levels of resistance among employees exists (Gilley, McMillan, & Gilley, 2009; Markus, 2004). Additionally, as the example of the Dutch military defence shows, the costs of and risks involved with implementing technological change are high (Lapointe &
Rivard, 2005).
Technological change differs from other types of organisational change, as it includes technical and functionality challenges, but cultural and organisational challenges as well. While some small technical changes may be restricted to a certain part of the organisation, most new technological projects influence the entire structure and routines of an organisation (Gilley et al., 2009; Lewis, Agarwal, &
Sambamurthy, 2003; Lyytinen & Newman, 2008; Osman-Gani & Jacobs, 2005; Strong & Volkoff, 2010). For example, enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), electronic patient files, customer relation management systems (CRM), automated accounting processes, centrally digitalized criminal records; students can even get their college degrees completely through online courses and exams nowadays. These technologies generally change the entire organisation. Moreover, technological change therefore differs from organisational change, as it does not simply includes a technical adjustment to a system, it nowadays affects procedures and tasks of employees and sometimes even the strategy and culture of an organisation as well (Dalpiaz, Giorgini, & Mylopoulos, 2013; Mumford, 2006).
Organisations have become increasingly dependent on the success of implementing new technologies, as many crucial organisational processes done previously by employees are now being automated and the costs of and risks with these changes are relatively high.
Change agents trying to successfully implement new technologies face complex challenges due to these many different aspects of technological change and possibly explains why around 60 per cent
1
http://nos.nl/artikel/2033520-hennis-wil-peperduur-ict-project-defensie-staken.html Accessed on 02-05-2015
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
6 of these changes fail. Many authors have therefore emphasised the importance of change agents and
their role in implementing these change projects (Faraj & Sambamurthy, 2006; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Mata, Fuerst, & Barney, 1995; Rivard & Lapointe, 2012). A change agent is someone who is responsible for initiating and implementing technological change and can be an internal manager or an external consultant in practice (Kendra & Tapin, 2004). As change agents are responsible for handling the different facets technological change, a better understanding of their role is important. Even though many valuable results have been found from studying change agent’s competencies in implementing organizational change, little is known whether these competencies also proof to be relevant for technological as well (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995; Faraj & Sambamurthy, 2006). Since change agents implementing technological change are challenged by the scope and diversity of the change, facing high levels of resistance and functionality issues (Rivard & Lapointe, 2012), a better understanding of why certain competencies of change agents are more important than others will provide change agents with practical insights of how to deal with the complex challenges related to technological.
The term socio-technical change is used to explain technological change which comprises not only technical changes, but also social and organisational change (Lyytinen & Newman, 2008;
Mumford, 2006). Change agents implementing socio-technical change face difficult challenges and even though these challenges are acknowledged by many scholars, several theoretical gaps remain (Faraj &
Sambumarthy, 2006; Karahanna & Watson, 2006). For example, most current research focuses on the architecture of a technology, how to create a fit between subsystems or how change recipients respond to changes, while little is known of the role of the change agent (Faraj & Sambamurthy, 2006; Gilley, Dixon, & Gilley, 2008; Karahanna & Watson, 2006). Subsequently, extensive empirical research exists on competencies of change agents in the organisational change field and have shown to provide significant results in improving change implementations (Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache &
Alexander 2010; Higgs & Rowland, 2011; Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008). Additionally, as some effective competencies have been found in other change fields (see for an overview study done by Higgs and Rowland, 2011), what competencies are needed to implement socio-technical change is missing and essential in improving the immature field of research.
Moreover, Sharma and Rai (2015) argue that different types of change implementations require different competencies of change agents. Therefore, providing change agents with knowledge on which competencies are most crucial in implementing socio-technical change in specific would provide change agents with valuable practical tools. First, little is known about how change agents and their competencies influence the implementation process of socio-technical change (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995; Faraj & Sambamurthy, 2006). Second, whether or not change agents need different competencies to implement this specific type of change, compared to other types of organizational changes, is unclear.
Third, the context and the type of change could determine which competencies are more crucial and
which are less important. Finally, competencies can be trained and improved and are potential predictors
of effective behaviour (RoseKrasnor, 1997). Therefore, studying the effects of different types of
competencies on socio-technical change implementation will proof to be a helpful tool in improving implementation success.
Hence, the following research is proposed: what competencies do change agents need to have to implement socio-technical change successfully?
To answer this research question, a systematic literature review will be conducted. Since there has not been much written about change agent’s competencies in combination with implementing socio- technical change, available knowledge and results from organisational change fields will be used and combined with the characteristics of socio-technical change. The results from the systematic literature review will present an analysis of what is already known about change agents in the socio-technical field, what we know about change agent’s competencies in general and what we know about the specific characteristics of socio-technical change. This paper focuses on the implementation phase of a change process and therefore excludes any papers and results on the designing and evaluation phase of change, since the role of the change agent is most influential during the implementation phase (Kendra & Tapin, 2004).
Theoretical framework
Change agent and competencies
Socio-technical change is usually implemented by a change agent, who can be in practice the head of the IT department of the organisation or an external consultant. In general, a change agent is the person responsible for the implementation of a change in an organisation (Kendra & Taplin, 2004; Von Urff Kaufeld, Chari & Freeme, 2009). However, a change agent dealing with socio-technical change is expected to be different from other types of organisational change agents, as the combination of technology and business creates unique challenges (Karahanna & Watson, 2006). The following section combines knowledge of competencies of change agents from organisational change fields and socio- technical change. Competencies of change agents are a set of principles and core elements of human behaviour and are predictors of behaviour (Russ-Eft, 1995). Moreover, examples of competencies according to Decker (2014) and Von Urff Kaufeld et al. (2009) are knowledge, abilities, skills and traits of a change agent that lead to actual behaviour. The next paragraph links relevant competencies to socio- technical change.
Socio-technical change
This specific type of change is used in this paper as the theoretical perspective on technological
change. Since socio-technical change emphases both the social and the technical parts of change, it is a
valuable approach to manage technical challenges, but resistance, cultural and behavioural challenges
as well (Baxter & Sommerville, 2011). As was mentioned before, many current literature treats
technological change as a black box: Either focusing on the technical side of change or the social side
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
8 of it (Lyytinen & Newman, 2008; Volkoff, Strong & Elmes, 2005). Subsequently, taking a holistic view
on technological change within organisations would decrease the possibility of neglecting relevant aspects (Choi, Kang & Lee, 2008). For example, some scholars focus on creating a technical fit between an organization’s architecture and systems and stress how important this technical fit is for the functionality of a technology (Coiera, 2007; Soh & Sia, 2005; Strong & Volkoff, 2010). Even though this perspective is neither redundant nor wrong, a change agent often faces technical and social challenges (Kwahk & Ahn, 2010). Moreover, Baxter and Sommerville (2011) argue that taking a socio- technical change approach is valuable to organisations, as it lends itself best for an integral view on implementing technological change. Therefore, connecting competencies of change agents with socio- technical change would be most useful and complete in providing theoretical and practical implications for change agents. A socio-technical change implementation is considered to be successful when both technical and social goals are fulfilled: The technology works and is being used by employees (Doherty, 2014).
Managing resistance and communicating effectively. Since socio-technical change requires of change agents that they are capable to handle technical and social challenges, the competencies that change agents need will need to fit with those challenges. For example, Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder (1993) argue that in order to create support and readiness change agents need to use great communication skills to: The message of the change and the social interpretation of that message by employees decreases resistance against the new technology. Next, persuasive communication and active participation are influential strategies for change agents to manage resistance. These strategies are effective since they focus on creating a credible vision, conveying that vision to employees and involve employees in the change process (Armenakis et al., 1993). Moreover, Ford, Ford and D’Amelio (2008) found that change agents can actually contribute to resistance of employees when they do not communicate or communicate poorly. Without legitimizing the change, representing the realistic chances of success and failing to call people to action employees will find it difficult to support the change (Doherty, 2014; Ford et al., 2008). “The key message for senior stakeholders must be that the ultimate realization of meaningful benefits is dependent upon far more than the successfully delivery of a piece of software. Consequently, all project activities and outcomes must be defined in terms of specific benefits to be realized” (Doherty, 2014, p. 184). In general, communicating effectively and creating support and commitment decreases the chances of resistance among employees and increases the opportunity to implement a new technological change successfully (Armenakis et al., 2006; Doherty, 2014; Ford et al., 2008).
However, current literature describing which specific competencies change agents need is
indecisive. For example, Weiss and Adams (2011) found that soft skills, such as communicating
effectively and building commitment, increased the effectiveness of a change agent. Technical
competencies were less relevant on the other hand. Von Urff Kaufeld et al. (2009) found the same result
in their literature study: Technological expertise is needed, but being an effective leader is more crucial.
Due to the increased complexity of implementing socio-technical changes, more soft skills are required of change agents than in previous decades (Karahanna & Watson, 2006; Von Urff Kaufeld et al., 2009).
While technical competencies were sufficient enough to manage small scale ICT solutions before, larger and more ambiguous technological projects go hand in hand with more challenging team processes and a change in tasks and procedures. Nowadays, a change agent is expected to set direction, build commitment, mobilise employees and resources and adapts technology to fit with a changing environment and organisation (Karahanna and Watson, 2006).
Moreover, Gilley et al. (2008) found that social skills were most effective in driving innovation and change. Motivation and job satisfaction of employees increased when change agents were able to communicate, build commitment and trust in favour of the change. Therefore, a change agent’s competency to focus on how employees respond to a change and coach and motivate them during this process is essential. However, not every type of social competencies were most determent for successful change and innovation success. Gilley et al. (2008) also found that the competency to communicate and motivate were most crucial and significantly related to change success, while the competency to involve and to coach others were important, but not deterministic. Without participation and coaching, implementing change would be more challenging, while without sufficient communication and the ability to motivate others implementing change would certainly fail. However, having specific knowledge about innovation types, being innovative or creating new ideas did not increase the success of change implementation. Hence, having technical competencies as a change agent could be redundant:
The ability to motivate others to be innovative and change instead is most crucial (Gilley et al., 2008).
Managing technical challenges. Opposed to these former suggestions, Karahanna and Watson (2006) argue that effective technological leaders need to have specific technical knowledge as well.
Without the knowledge and understanding of technology, it is impossible to ‘play the game’. Change agents need to understand possible technical applications, their infrastructure and their influence on organizational processes (Marchand, Kettinger & Rollins, 2000). Responsible change agents should have competent technical skills, such as analysing possible technological applications, having technical expertise to control business operations and manage software and hardware effectively. Bloomfield and Danieli (1995) also argue that change agents should be able to understand the technology and translate that to others. Current IT systems are too complex to be left to the skills of hardware of software suppliers. Instead, the responsible change agent should be competent enough to advise others on the software and hardware, its connection with the organisation, on reports and requirements analyses (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995). These technical competencies will enhance the functionality of the technology and its fit with the organisation, making it more successful.
Based on the former, change agents were more effective when they used soft skills more than
technical skills, suggesting a fair understanding of the technology is relevant, while the competency to
manage team processes, change processes and possible resistance and communicate properly is crucial
(Gilley et al., 2008; Weiss & Adams, 2011). This suggests that technical competencies are important to
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
10 an extent, but are not enough to manage the complexity and changing nature of socio-technical change
today.
Categories
Table 1 lists different types of knowledge, skills, abilities, capabilities and competencies found from the literature and groups them into three categories: Social, political and technical. Karahanna and Watson (2006) and Bloomfield and Danieli (1995) found relatively similar categorical competencies in their literature review. Both made a distinction between social, political and technical competencies as these categories were often referred to in the literature (Boomfield & Danieli, 1995; Karahanna &
Watson, 2006). Some scholars also refer to business skills or organisational skills, although these concepts remain vague. Some use these terms to describe social competencies, political or a combination of both (Von Urff Kaufeld et al., 2009). The categories social, political and technical competencies are therefore used to group specific skills as their goals and influence on implementing change is different (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995).
Social competencies are competencies that increase the effectiveness of a person in social interaction (RoseKrasnor, 1997). Examples are skills that focus on communication, the ability to understand employees, the ability to understand your own feelings, to be emotionally stable and the capability to motivate others. Political competencies on the other hand are focused on developing a network and support and to make deals (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995; Riggio & Lee, 2007). These competencies increase the effectiveness of a person in a business interaction and are related to power, where the goal of the interaction differs from social interaction. The goal of having political competencies is to strive for power (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995). Examples of specific skills are negotiation skills, conflict skills, creating coalitions and networking skills. Finally, specific knowledge of the technology or architecture, increasing the functionality of the system and project management skills are specific technical competencies of change agents (Marchand et al., 2000).
Social and political competencies differ in their approach and goal. Social competencies are
focused on understanding employees and creating a social workplace, whereas political competencies
are focused on creating support, power and deals (Tocher, Oswald, Shook & Adams, 2012). Although
they often overlap in practice, their underlying goals and consequences differ. For example, change
agents who rely heavily on their political competencies will be more likely to focus on success, whereas
change agents who focuses on social competencies is trying to maintain their relationships with
employees (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995). Finally, technical competencies are focused on understanding
technology, its applications and influence on the organisation (Karahanna & Watson, 2006).
Table 1
Change agent competencies
Author Competency Category
Avgerou and McGrath (2007) Networking skills Technical skills Rational capabilities
Political Technical
No specific group Bloomfield and Danieli (1995) Pitching
Winning contracts Persuasion Communication Negotiation
Advising on hardware and software
IT strategy reports Information requirements analysis
Political Political Political Social Political Technical
Technical Technical
Gilley et al. (2008) and Gilley et al. (2009)
Communication skills Ability to build teams Ability to motivate others
Social
Social/political Social
Groves (2005) Social skills
Emotional skills Self-regulating skills Change skills
Social Social Social
Social/political Higgs and Rowland (2005) and
Higgs and Rowland (2011)
Creating the case for change Creating structural change Engaging others in the whole change process and building commitment
Implementing and sustaining changes
Facilitating and developing capability
Social/political No specific group Social/political
Political
Social
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
12 Table 1 continued
Author Competency Category
Karahanna and Watson (2006) Political competencies Social competencies Business competencies IS competencies Interpersonal communication skills
Political Social
Social/political Technical Social
Marchand et al. (2000) Ability to increase functionality
Understand technical applications
Control business operations Manage software and hardware effectively
Technical
Technical
Technical Technical
Nikolaou, Gouras, Vakola and Bourantis (2007)
Negotiation skills Conflict skills
Communication skills Team building skills Leadership skills
Project management skills
Political Social/political Social
Social
Social/political Technical/political Portillo-Rodriguez, Vizcaino,
Piattini and Beecham (2014)
Ability to coordinate Ability to communicate
Technical Social Von Urff Kaufeld et al. (2009) Business skills
Technology skills
Leadership and management skills
Organisation and culture skills
Fiscal management skills
Social/political Technical Social/political
Social/political
Other
Weiss and Adams (2011) Soft skills Social/political
Socio-technical systems approach
The socio-technical systems approach is be used as the theoretical perspective on technological change. Baxter and Sommerville (2011) argue that taking a socio-technical change approach is often valuable in organizations, since it entails both technical aspects, implementing different architectures and systems, and social aspects, overcoming resistance and changing behaviour of employees to work with the new technology (Lyytinen & Newman, 2008). Moreover, socio-technical change goes beyond the traditional boundaries of organizational change, as it is larger in both scale and scope (Lyytinen &
Newman, 2008). Due to the central premise in this theory of putting equal weight to social and technical factors, it comprises the most essential parts of implementing technological change. It takes multiple aspects of technological change into account, such as job design, tasks and participation of employees and functionality, applicability and adaptation of a new system (Cherns, 1976; Doherty, 2014; Mumford, 2006). For the limited scope of this paper the socio-technical systems theory will be used instead of multiple technological theories, as the socio-technical approach lends itself best for a comprehensive perspective on change agents implementing technological change and dealing with both social and technical challenges and opportunities (Baxter & Sommerville, 2011; Doherty, 2014).
Principles of socio-technical systems theory
The social-technical systems theory has close connections to Lewin’s action research and the
Human Relations Approach as it started around 1970 and is historically based on creating a quality
working live, democracy and taking action where social subsystems and technical subsystems are
interrelated. Based on these foundations, the socio-technical design was initially developed to optimize
intelligence and skills associated with new technologies (Mumford, 2006). It developed on the premise
that technical and human factors should be given equal weight in the design process of implementing a
new system. The technical system is seen as every technology in the organization and the related work
structures, while the social system is considered to be a collective and congruent system of teams,
coordination, and control and boundary management. Self-managing groups should make sure that
within these systems, people had the opportunity to make decisions and give their opinion (Cherns,
1976; Mumford, 2006). Table 2 lists several different definitions used by authors to describe socio-
technical change and their approach to it.
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
14 Table 2
Definitions of socio-technical change
Definition Author Focus (individual, org.)
“An underlying principle of a the normative or functionalist research paradigm.”
Avgerou and McGrath (2007, p. 295)
Organizational
“… an approach to design that considers human, social and organizational factors, as well as technical factors in the design of organizational systems.”
Baxter and Sommerville (2010, p. 4)
Organizational
“Organizational objectives are best met not by the
optimization of the technical system and the adaptation of a social system to it, but by the joint optimization of the technical and social aspects.”
Cherns (1976, p. 784) Individual
“An interplay of humans, organizations, and technical systems.”
Dalpiaz et al. (2013, p. 1) Organizational
“Social and technical sub- systems in which the complete task performance is undertaken by human resources in the social system using technical resources in the technical system and where the two are ideally co-optimised.”
Maguire (2013, p. 162) Organizational
“As a means for optimizing the intelligence and skills of human beings and associating these with new technologies.”
Mumford (2006, p. 320) Individual
Characteristics of socio-technical systems
The central premise of the socio-technical systems approach is that technical and social subsystems cooperate in an open system, where a collaboration between different systems exists, not sequential, but interrelated (Doherty, 2014). These different systems operate within an inclusive system, while including the environment of the organization (Dalpiaz et al., 2013; Mumford, 2006). Even though there are several different approaches within the socio-technical theory, they all focus on some underlying theoretical principles (Lyytinen & Newman, 2008) as can be seen in tables 2 and 3. Second, socio- technical change was often analysed from an organisational level, instead, many authors currently analyse it from a multilevel or even individual level (Lyytinen and Newman 2008). Whereas leaders and change agents were concerned with managing a fit between the organization, its technologies and the environment, change agents today need to take tasks and procedures of employees into account as well (Doherty, 2014). Partly due to the large levels of resistance during socio-technical implementations, dealing with individuals and groups has received increased attention and especially how the role of change agents fit in this (Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Volkoff et al., 2005).
Table 3
Subsystems in the socio-technical systems approach
Subsystems according to Cherns (1976) Subsystems according to Lyytinen and Newman (2008)
(a) Organizational goals (a) Technology
(b) Adaptation to the environment (b) Actors (c) Integration of activities of the people in the
organization
(c) Tasks
(d) Procedures
Subsystems. Doherty (2014) and Kwahj and Ahn (2010) also emphasise the importance of congruence between the many subsystems of an organisation. This congruence of social and technical parts is what creates an opportunity for change agents to improve the change process. As Doherty (2014, p. 181) suggests: “… Unless system designers find effective ways of managing the human and organisational implications of their software products… failure is unlikely to abate. One suggested remedy to this problem is through the adoption of socio-technical design processes, as these explicitly address … and the need to identify and mitigate the risks of negative organisational consequences.”
Moreover, Doherty (2014) argues that change agents need to connect organisational goals to the
technical system, as the technical service in itself does not deliver solutions to the organisation. It needs
to be suitable to organisational processes and goals. This view is also supported by Kwahk and Ahn
(2010) who emphasise that technical errors are not the only cause of failure. Instead, a lack of
participation and interaction with employees and the organisation in general causes failure as well. The
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
16 socio-technical systems approach underlines the importance of participation of employees and the
interrelatedness of multiple subsystems (Doherty, 2014; Kwahk & Ahn, 2010; Mumford, 2006). Change agents therefore need to have competencies that fit with the socio-technical perspective on change.
Congruence with the environment. Subsequently, the principle of matching internal diversity with external complexity as one of the design characteristics of the socio-technical systems theory implies that change agents should have sufficient knowledge of a technology and the ability to match this with internal processes. In practice, a change agent can reduce the organisation’s variance in different units or self-regulating systems when it faces increasing external variance, e.g. congruence (Majchrzak & Borys, 2001). Whether the variance is of positive influence on the organization or not, it should be met with an adjustment within the organisation. According to Portillo-Rodriguez et al. (2014), congruence requires a reflection of the technological system on the physical structure of the developing organisation. This principle requires change agents to understand the internal and external processes of an organization, knowing what the organisation’s structures require and improving technologies to reach congruence (Portillo-Rodriguez et al. 2014). Hence, reaching congruence is according to the socio- technical theory needed for an organization to operate effectively and change agents should therefore always strive for congruence.
Based on these views a change agent dealing with a new technology or system should be able to critically analyse the internal and external processes of an organization, in order to decide if subsystems currently fit and if not, how congruence can be reached. Second, striving for congruence between social and technical subsystems requires multiple competencies of change agents:
Competencies to manage participation and possible resistance, and competencies to connect the technology with the organisation in terms of functionality and processes. Since the socio-technical change approach emphasises that these subsystems interrelate and are part of an open system, simply understanding one subsystem without the other would lead to failure (Kwahk & Ahn, 2010).
Theoretical framework
Figure 1 shows a theoretical framework of the current available knowledge on competencies of
change agents and socio-technical change. A gap remains between what is known of competencies of
change agents in other types of organisational change, and what competencies influence the success
change agents implementing socio-technical changes in specific remains inconclusive. The categories
social, political and technical competencies of change agents are suggested to influence the success of
implementing socio-technical change processes. Figure 2 shows the conceptual framework based on the
literature.
Figure 1
Theoretical framework
Figure 2
Conceptual framework
S-T change success Resistance
Interaction
Commitment
Congruence
Functionality Social competencies
Technical competencies Political competencies Communicate
Emotional
Self-regulating
Motivate
Negotiating
Team building
Soft- and hardware
Translation
Functional
+
+
-
+ + + + +
+
+
+ + -
+
+
+
Since the literature field of which competencies change agents need to manage socio-technical change successfully and managing change is not completely brought together yet and is still immature (Avgerou
& McGrath, 2007; Faraj & Sambamurthy, 2006; Karahanna & Watson, 2006; Mata et al., 1995), a systematic literature review of existing different perspectives in different literature fields is needed. By systematically searching for relevant literature in other change areas and what is already known about competencies of change agents and leaders, this paper will contribute to the socio-technical change field with a more comprehensive view on change agent’s competencies during technological change implementation. Analyses and results from other change literature fields will be combined with characteristics of socio-technical change implementations. Hence, a combination of several literature field will close the gap of which competencies are most effective in implementing socio-technical change. This type of research has the main advantage of using a step by step procedure ensuring the quality and transparency of the literature review. Subsequently, it maps and assesses important knowledge in a thorough way, while decreasing the chances of relevant literature to be neglected (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003). Finally, a systematic literature review uses a predefined selection process for selecting data in an objective manner (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010). The following paragraphs explain which data collections methods and analyses were used.
Data collection
The data collecting process consisted of searching for relevant literature from different online databases in a predefined way. First, keywords and search terms for the research purpose were defined.
Second, online search engines and journals with publications on business, organisational change and
technological change such as Web of Science and Business Source Premier to include as much relevant
articles as possible (Kitchenham et al., 2007). Web of Science generally includes a wider range of
articles in social and business sciences, whereas Business Source Premier includes articles in the field
of business and organisational sciences. Finally, every found article was peer reviewed and part of an
academic journal to assure the quality of the article. Keywords that were used to find relevant articles
were ‘competencies OR abilities OR skills technological change’, ‘leadership managing technological
change’, ‘technological change AND/OR technological implementation’, ‘socio-technical change
AND/OR socio-technical implementation’, ‘information technology change AND/OR information
systems change’, ‘managing technological change’, ‘leadership competencies OR abilities OR skills
AND managing change’ and ‘change agent competencies OR abilities OR skills’ to search in titles,
abstracts and paper topics. Different words describing the same topic were used to decrease the
possibility of ignoring articles which actually described the same topic. For example, some authors use
skills or abilities to describe what change agents need to do to implement change successfully, while
these terms were also relevant for searching for competencies of change agents.
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
20 To decrease the chance of potentially ignoring important articles, the tables of content of generally
accepted high quality journals were checked for ‘socio-technical change’, ‘IS leadership’ and
‘competencies OR skills leader OR change agent’. The journals that were scanned are MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Change Management and Leadership Quarterly between 2010 and 2015. These four journals were used since they are considered to be high quality papers in their research field. Due to the limited scope of this research these four journals were randomly picked to cover the literature field of socio-technical change, leadership and change agents and organisational change as much as possible. By adding articles that were possibly missed through the electronic database search, a more comprehensive data set was gathered (Webster & Watson, 2002).
Consideration set. After having gathered a list of relevant articles the number of articles were filtered on abstract and key words. Abstracts and key words matching this research topic were added to the consideration list. Abstracts were filtered on leader or agent perspective, socio-technical change, competencies, abilities or skills of change agents or leaders, specific IS leadership topics or implementation of socio-technical change. Only recently published articles, articles that are highly cited and specific empirical studies on change agents’ competencies were considered to be valuable for this research. Articles were filtered on year of publication, number of citations and topic terms. Papers were considered to be recent when they were published in 2010 or later, ten or more citations was considered high enough to include a paper for its value. Articles that were published within the past ten years were suggested to measure competencies of change agents or characteristics of socio-technical change implementations in today’s organisational context. Older articles can be very valuable, but can be limited in that their case studies are different from the ones today. Number of citations of articles was used as a criteria to ensure that the article was valued and proven to be a quality paper by other scholars. Finally, duplications from different databases were filtered as well. The papers were then divided into the following categories: (a) recent papers and (b) highly cited papers, (c) added papers through journals and (d) added through back referencing. Several papers were added from cross referencing and searching in table of contents of journals.
Quality of the papers were assured by filtering on quality of journals, quality of the analyses and
detailed description of the research design. In case the article did not consisted of a clear methodology
section and how the results were gathered and ensured of quality, the article was excluded. Table 4
shows how many articles were initially found, filtered and selected for the consideration set.
Table 4
Number of papers in each search engine and journal
Database Initial pool Filtered Abstract
analysed
Less duplicates
Web of Science 3385 198 53 19
Business Source Premier 5056 276 75 24
Journals MISQ EJIS LQ JCM
3 3 3 2
6 2
3 1 0
Total 8441 474 139 49
Most of the articles were found through a systematic search in electronic databases and only six were added through a search in journals till 2010. Seven more articles were then added, which were not categorised as highly cited or very recent, but were added since their topic was focused in specific on leadership and leadership competencies in socio-technical change and were therefore considered to be valuable to this research. By reviewing the citations in the articles that were gathered in the first two steps the chance of ignoring relevant prior research was decreased (Webster & Watson, 2002). This backward reviewing was the final step in selecting articles for the consideration set. Table 5 shows the number of papers in each group.
Table 5
Number of papers in each group
Group a: recent papers 16
Group b: highly cited papers 25
Group c: added through journals 6 Group d: added through back referencing 7
Total 49
Data analysis
After selecting a group of articles for the consideration set, each article was reviewed and
categorized based on focus, type of data gathering and research method. Then based on a hermeneutic
approach, each article was reviewed and analysed and coded into the competency groups. The coding
scheme was not predefined and developed after reading several articles. The summary of the articles
and the coding scheme can be found in appendix A, B, D and E. Although this hermeneutical approach
is subjective and interpretive in nature, it fits with the goal of this research. Without a predefined coding
Change agent’s competencies in successfully implementing socio-technical change: a systematic literature review
22 scheme, the hermeneutic circle is a useful tool to understand and make sense of research articles. After
reading the articles several times a quality check was done based on whether or not a research indeed measured competencies of change agents and not general change strategies and if these competencies were linked to leadership in change or socio-technical change. Second, quality of method and analyses were measured with a predefined quality scheme (ranging from 1 till 5) largely based on quality measurement suggestions by Kitchenham et al. (2007). Articles scoring lower than 15 out of 25 points were excluded and articles scoring higher than 15 were only included if they also scored a 3 or higher on whether the article was of added value to this research specifically.
The quality scheme can be found in appendix c. This quality check resulted in eleven articles that were filtered and excluded from the final data set. For an in-depth data analysis a remaining of 38 articles were considered as relevant, mostly published between 2005 and 2015 which can be seen in figure 3.
Figure 3
Number of articles published by year
Discussion and results
Descriptive results
Appendix A and B summarises the descriptive results of the quality review of the 38 articles in the data set. Most articles had an individual focus (47%) and measured competencies (80%) instead of behavioural styles (20%). The rest of the articles either focused on the group, organisation, process or the architecture of the technology. It is clear that most of the research done on socio-technical change
1 1 1 1
4
1
14
15
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1975-1980 1980-1985 1985-1990 1990-1995 1995-2000 2000-2005 2005-2010 2010-2015
