Relevance of agile change management in a dynamic business environment

Abstract

Conventional change management approaches are increasingly reaching their limits in a business environment characterised by volatility, dynamics, and complexity. In other contexts, attempts are often made to counter these aspects with agile approaches. The extent to which this also makes sense in the field of change management has not been frequently investigated to date. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine the extent to which agile change management contributes to the successful handling of changes in a dynamic business environment. For this purpose, 30 interviews were conducted with change management and organisational development experts from various small, medium-sized, and large companies in Germany. The data obtained was primarily analysed qualitatively, using a structuring content analysis according to Mayring (2015). The results of the research show that change management can strongly benefit from agility. In particular, this is the case with respect to self-organisation, iteration, and experimentation. Agile change management makes sense even in more conventional, hierarchical organisations. However, there are indeed organisation-, project- or context-specific characteristics that speak particularly in favour of the use of agile change management approaches or make more conventional change management approaches seem more reasonable. Often, it is even advisable to use a clever mixture of both.