Giving sense to change leadership : towards a narrative-based process model

Sadarić, Antonio (author), Škerlavaj, Miha (author)

Introduction: Recent studies on change agency and organizational change failure have significantly broadened the organizational behavior perspective on individual change experiences, however, the underlying mechanism for change leaders’ in uential behavior remains a relatively underspecified area. Objectives: Our central theoretical contribution focuses on the ways in which linking the findings from different research areas that deal with storytelling and persuasive communication can contribute to understanding the underlying mechanism of change leaders’ in uential behavior. Methods: 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, political science, consumer psychology, and religious studies. Results: Our approach draws on the key theoretical perspectives from the 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. Conclusion: 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.

• Language: English
• Keywords: organization, knowledge transfer, communications, business efficiency, change leadership, persuasive communication, narrative-based process model, social cognitive theory
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 41-63
• Numbering: Vol. 25, iss. 1, article no. 4
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148034
• UDC: 331.5
• ISSN on article: 2335-4216
• DOI: 10.15458/2335-4216.1317
• COBISS.SI-ID: 142791171
• Publication date in RUL: 26.07.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Economic and business review
• Publisher: Ekonomska fakulteta
• ISSN: 2335-4216
• COBISS.SI-ID: 268649216

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: organizacija, prenos znanja, komuniciranje, uspešnost poslovanja

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P5-0410
• Name: Digitalizacija kot gonilo trajnostnega razvoja posameznika, organizacij in družbe

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Funding programme: “Young Researchers” programme