Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze how change is constructed by local actions and interactions of an organization. Drawing on critical realism and assuming organizational change to be a practical and social performance, a mediating entity - organizational character - is postulated to account for relationship between structure, agency, and action. The empirical study addresses local transformation and organizational character through analyzing events that are related to the development of service business in the context of a large energy company. In the empirical study, the organizational character in context consists of prudence, and of the pursuit of technical excellence and operational efficiency. Prudence is an action disposition in context when encountering new situations. The pursuit of technical excellence was a result of the past construction era. The pursuit of operational efficiency is a typical characteristic in an industry context. Three modes of praxis were identified: the habitual mode of praxis consists of fragmentizing and ensuring, and is aimed at operational efficiency for maintaining the organization; the transformative mode is directed toward the future and consists of envisioning the future and searching for new alternatives; and the contingent mode entails judgments to cope with current problems in the present and is characterized by improvisation. The integration of the relationships identified in the empirical study results in a model of local change. The local changes continuously and recursively construct outcomes of praxis that result in new configurations. In emerging and evolving situations new actions become necessary. Human agents engage in creative and transformative actions that are affected by the organizational character. Organizational character, in the context of this study, overshadows creative and transformative capacities of human agents but does not prevent local changes to the context. With regard to the practical outcomes of the study, a suggestion for the management of organizational change is that attention must be paid to internalized action dispositions in which the organization, human agents, and social consciousness about context and action, are intertwined.
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