Giving Sense to Change Leadership: Towards a Narrative-Based Process Model

Abstract

Recent studies on change agency and organizational change failure have significantly broadened the organizational behavior perspective on individual change experiences and related group dynamics. However, the underlying mechanism for change leaders’ influential behavior remains a relatively underspecified area. We examine the various strands of research in management concerned with change leadership and persuasive communication, and propose a multidisciplinary perspective from developmental psychology, linguistics and consumer psychology. This approach draws on key theoretical perspectives from social cognitive theory and commensurable interdisciplinary findings as the basis for a narrative-based process model of change leaders’ influential behavior. Our model includes propositions about the change leader’s interpretation of ideological change as well as the change leader’s process of sensemaking and sensegiving. We argue that the change leader’s persuasive communication efforts are based on the leader’s narrative intelligence and influence, which promote the change recipient’s attachment formation. We conclude by addressing the theoretical limitations of interdisciplinary perspectives and suggesting future directions for the importance of narrative research in change agency.