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Building change leadership capability: 'The quest for change competence'

Building change leadership capability: 'The quest for change competence'
Building change leadership capability: 'The quest for change competence'
While the literature highlights the continuing, and indeed growing, significance of the challenge of implementing change effectively (eg Kotter, 1994; Carnall, 1999) and explores reasons for failures (eg Kotter, 1996) there seems to be little agreement on a way forward. The seeds for potential progress appear to lie within the examination of change competencies and the building of capability for managing significant and continuing change. This paper examines the literature relating to change competencies and capabilities and presents a case study which demonstrates how a competence-based approach has been applied in practice. The process of identifying critical competencies is explored, and a specific change competency framework is examined. In exploring the case, qualitative evidence is presented which suggests that the competency framework, and its application in practice, has had a real impact on the development of change capability in an organisation. This research is seen as being exploratory, however, and providing a stimulus for further research streams which are described towards the end of the paper. The paper concludes that it is focusing on what is involved in implementing change which will lead to a real understanding of the critical competencies required and of a means of building change capability with an organisation.
change management, change execution, leadership competencies, development, change models
1469-7017
116-130
Higgs, Malcolm
bd61667f-4b7c-4caf-9d79-aee907c03ae3
Rowland, Deborah
b0a90189-ac22-4fff-9695-f850b04e679a
Higgs, Malcolm
bd61667f-4b7c-4caf-9d79-aee907c03ae3
Rowland, Deborah
b0a90189-ac22-4fff-9695-f850b04e679a

Higgs, Malcolm and Rowland, Deborah (2000) Building change leadership capability: 'The quest for change competence'. Change Management Journal, 1 (2), 116-130. (doi:10.1080/714042459).

Record type: Article

Abstract

While the literature highlights the continuing, and indeed growing, significance of the challenge of implementing change effectively (eg Kotter, 1994; Carnall, 1999) and explores reasons for failures (eg Kotter, 1996) there seems to be little agreement on a way forward. The seeds for potential progress appear to lie within the examination of change competencies and the building of capability for managing significant and continuing change. This paper examines the literature relating to change competencies and capabilities and presents a case study which demonstrates how a competence-based approach has been applied in practice. The process of identifying critical competencies is explored, and a specific change competency framework is examined. In exploring the case, qualitative evidence is presented which suggests that the competency framework, and its application in practice, has had a real impact on the development of change capability in an organisation. This research is seen as being exploratory, however, and providing a stimulus for further research streams which are described towards the end of the paper. The paper concludes that it is focusing on what is involved in implementing change which will lead to a real understanding of the critical competencies required and of a means of building change capability with an organisation.

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More information

Published date: July 2000
Keywords: change management, change execution, leadership competencies, development, change models

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 51431
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/51431
ISSN: 1469-7017
PURE UUID: 5c9b69d6-b8dd-476b-a8c8-92fb7c6791d4
ORCID for Malcolm Higgs: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9032-0416

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Date deposited: 20 Aug 2008
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:57

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Author: Malcolm Higgs ORCID iD
Author: Deborah Rowland

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