Abstract

Purpose – Management of change in organizations is pivotal to concepts appertaining to business, the public sector and academia. While there has been considerable research into change management, there is a paucity of literature on conceptualization, sustainability and governance of values and practices in organizational change. The purposes of this paper are: (a) to discuss the governance of organizational change management (OCM); and, (b) to investigate the catalytic role of values and change agents in order to ensure customized and responsible transformation and/or management of change. Design/methodology/approach – Employing an ergological approach, it is argued that governance of organizational change is conceptualized as a debate about values and norms. To this end, the research was conducted using case studies drawn from public sector agencies, e.g., human services, social services, and family and social services administration. Leaders and change agents were interviewed for purposes of exploring their values, behavior and actions vis-à-vis change. The theoretical perspective is based on discourse analysis and operationalized through sense-making and decision-making. Findings – The study shows that in organizations such as public sector agencies, institutions in which values and norms are critical components of their core services, decision-making systems appertaining to change processes are characterized by non-rationality and complexity. They can only be managed and governed through dialogic investigation of the dimensions of organizational leadership and the value standards of the organizations.