Embracing LMX-Quality and Social Networks When Leading Change
摘要
The social network position of change agents positively affects the strategic implementation of change (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). However, the choice of change agent is not one-sided, that is, whom the change recipients trust; instead, they may also be management selected—trustworthy for the higher-up leaders (Lee et al., 2019). The role of leaders’ informal networks, which may also affect the selection process of the internal change agent in an organization, the leader-member exchange (LMX) quality, has seldom received scholarly attention. The current study aims to review and reconcile the literature on social network position and LMX quality of change agents and propose a dual-network theory of effective change agents. The chapter thus proposes to examine the effectiveness of high-quality LMX change agents, strategically positioned change agents in an informal network, and change agents who fit well in both the networks, that is, in the good books of both employees and top management. Plausible theoretical and practical implications and future research directions to further test and validate the proposed theory will also be discussed before concluding.