Abstract:
Organizational change is prevalent in businesses today. At it simplest level, this situation
involves a change agent who is directing change and a change target who is directly impacted by
the proposed modifications. Often these two groups differ with regard to authority such that the
change agent has greater authority and the proposed change reflects a ¿top-down¿ process.
However, change targets can sometimes express their views of proposals and even propose
alternatives. We are interested in such dialogues. We predict that change agents will construct
messages to targets that are primarily focused on the economic outcomes of proposals, whereas
change targets will construct messages that focus on generating new ideas. We conducted a roleplay
in which individuals played the role of university administrators cutting back the size of
student groups or the presidents of the affected groups. These roles constructed messages about
the proposed changes. Results supported our predictions.
