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My name is Dr. Nick Wylie,
I'm a senior lecturer in
human resource management
and organizational
behavior at Oxford
Brookes University in the UK.
My talk is on the connections
between consultancy and change
agency.
My research interests
are fairly broad,
but I have a focus on the
changing nature of management,
and I've done some research on
the role of internal consultancy
within organizations.
And I'm also interested
in the implications
of internal consultancy and change
agency for the professionalization
of the HR function.
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First thing that I want to do is to
examine the nature of change agency
by defining it.
So that means answering this
question, what is change agency.
It can be a fairly
common term, but one
that isn't always well understood.
It can mean different
things to different people,
and I want to highlight
initially what do I understand,
and what is important within
any definition of change agency.
From there I'm going to go on
to talk about the development
of change agency, so placing
it in a more historical context
and answering the question, where
does change agency come from?
So what does it actually involve?
What does it mean to be a change
agent within an organization?
And also, a very important question
and one that's not often asked,
is how is change agency organized?
So how is it implemented
within organizations?
The final section of
the talk draws together
some of the themes
that I'm going to be
highlighting, by
thinking about change
agency in an occupational context.
So looking at who are
the change agents?
What are the occupational
connections do they have?
And what are the implications of
that for management consultants,
and for their claims
to be able to deliver
change within organizations?
So that's an overview of what
the talk is going to contain.
And the first issue, as
I've already mentioned,
is to start thinking about
defining change agency.
